


Looks Like Carelessness

by DasWarSchonKaputt



Series: The Importance of Being Stark [1]
Category: Glee, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blaine Anderson is Tony Stark's Son, Don't Judge Me, F/M, M/M, Welcome to whatever this is, self-indulgent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-08 03:06:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasWarSchonKaputt/pseuds/DasWarSchonKaputt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine raises his eyebrows as he feels his lips twitch upwards. “I highly doubt my mom had an affair with Tony Stark.”</p><p>Dr Jones grins. “Be a hell of a story if she did, though, am I right?”</p><p>(Blaine really, <i>really</i> hates irony.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have always wanted to write Anderstark. For how long, you ask? Pretty much ever since I joined hte fandom. Yeah. That long. So here we go, a hilariously self-indulgent fic because you know what, I do what I want.
> 
> Warnings: referenced/implied alcoholism, divorce, past infidelity (Blaine's mom had an affair), a gay-bashing that results in murder (Sadie Hawkins), referenced flashbacks, panic attacks, paternity issues, and so much irony.
> 
> I think that's everything.

**Part I**

Before the year he turns fourteen, there are a lot of things that don’t really make sense in Blaine’s life. Nothing big enough to really induce worry, just … things.

Mom is weirdly anal about a lot of things to do with Blaine, like her constant refusal to let the school accelerate him through a couple of grades. She keeps going on about the importance of emotional development alongside intellectual development, and it sounds an awful lot like she’s scared of something when she says it.

Mom gets scared about a lot of things, actually. She lets out a white-faced, “Just like your father,” when she catches him reading Cooper’s college calculus textbook the year before high school, which: what? Dad is many, many things – absent most prevalently – but a numbers guy he is not. In fact, Blaine has very distinct memories of Mom chewing him out over forgetting to carry the one when calculating their food budget.

They’re just small things, honestly, little moments when Blaine does something abnormal and Mom clams up.

Then Blaine turns fourteen and his life just sort of falls apart.

His parents get into a massive fight the night before his birthday, screaming at each other and throwing crockery across the kitchen in anger. Blaine sits wide awake in his bedroom, his hands clasped over his ears, trying to drown out the noise with the sound of his thoughts.

It doesn’t work.

When he comes downstairs on his birthday, Mom is sat in the kitchen next to Dad, who gets as far as a stilted, “Happy Birthday, son,” before he’s standing abruptly and slamming out of the front door. Mom watches him go. She looks resigned before she turns to him and asks, all too brightly, what he wants for breakfast.

One month later, they’re sat at the same kitchen table, Mom and Dad both just as awkward as they had been that morning, and Blaine is coming out as gay. He stutters his way to a confession, wringing his hands nervously in front of him, and then waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And then Dad turns to Mom and tells her he wants a divorce.

\--

“Blaine,” Mom calls. “Are we seriously going to do this, Blaine?”

In response, Blaine turns up the volume on his stereo, and Christina Aguilera’s voice reaches a crescendo at, “ _So thanks for making me a fighter!_ ” He dimly hears Mom bang harder on his door, but he tunes it out, focusing on the book in front of him.

“Blaine,” Mom calls again. “ _Blaine, I swear to God_ —”

Blaine exhales deeply, pushing air out of his nose, before shutting his book – probably with more force than intended – and stomping across his room to the door. He pulls it open a crack and glares at his mom through the gap.

“Yes?” he asks, passive aggression laced heavily in his tone.

Mom sighs. “We need to talk about this, Blaine.” He moves to close the door again, but she catches her foot in it, blocking his attempt. “You may not believe it, but this has been building for a long time, Blaine.”

No it hasn’t, Blaine wants to say. This has been building since you and Dad spent the night before my birthday tearing into each other. This has been building since Dad started getting drunk off his face whenever he was home. This has been building for a month.

“Yeah, but it was the gay thing that _really_ tipped it over, right?” Blaine replies bitterly.

Mom shakes her head. “This wasn’t your fault.”

She’s lying.

She’s lying because she and Dad were happily married throughout the entirety of Cooper’s childhood. She’s lying because Dad has always looked at Blaine like he doesn’t know how to deal with him, with this child too smart for his own good, too fast to grow up. She’s lying because a week before Blaine came out, when Dad was too drunk to see straight, Blaine had found him in a pool of his own vomit, and Dad had looked up at Blaine and said with slurred, angry speech, “You were never my son.”

“Shame my birth certificate says otherwise,” Blaine had replied, but the words cut deep.

And Blaine realises now, that maybe his parents haven’t always _worked_ , but he has been the lynch pin in all of this.

“Whatever, Mom,” Blaine says, and shuts his door.

\--

Dad has moved out by the end of the week.

And Mom’s brave front crumbles.

It hurts at the time, an uncomfortable sting of rejection and gut-wrenching _what do we do now?_ As the days blur into weeks, though, and the weeks into months, the ache dulls. Mom tells him that it’s like chopping off an infected limb, but she says the words through tears. Blaine thinks maybe it’s more of an affirmation for her than for him.

The house feels empty, which is stupid, really, because Dad was never really home before.

Cooper drops by from college, crashing on their couch with the paper-thin excuse of ‘free food’, and stops Mom from doing anything stupid, like flying out to Chicago to beg Dad to take them back. She does leave an angry voicemail on his answering machine, though, and it contains more swearwords than Blaine knows how to spell. Cooper is probably the only thing about any of this that could possibly be classified as great.

School is a load of shit, but then again, when has it not been? If Blaine was expecting anything more from high school – which, let’s be honest, he wasn’t – then he guesses he might have been disappointed. Kids are kids wherever you go, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but always just as mean. If you’re different, you’re a target. And well, Blaine is a mixed-race, openly gay, un-certified genius with a recently divorced mother; he practically has a bull’s-eye drawn on his forehead.

The dance, though. That’s a mistake.

He’s angry, really, at Dad, and at the kids at school, and he wants to find a way to say _fuck you_ to anyone who thinks he can’t be who he is. So he asks Daniel, the only other out kid at his school, and Daniel says yes. There’s some kind of solidarity in not being alone, and in spite of the anger running wild in his veins, Blaine has a great night.

Blaine has a great night until a group of bullies and jocks corner them outside the dance and bash Daniel’s head in with a baseball bat.

He wants to be angry after that. He wants to be angry when they load him into an ambulance. He wants to be angry when Daniel dies on the operating table. He wants to be angry when they total up his injuries and it comes to a broken arm, a set of bruised ribs and a concussion.

It’s not fair and Blaine should be angry.

But he’s not.

He’s just tired and scared and resigned.

\--

They keep him overnight for observation. Mom spends about thirty minutes fussing over him before the nurses manage to force her out of the hospital room, leaving him alone when the doctor on duty comes in later to check on him.

She’s probably trying to put him at ease when she does it, shuffling over to the side of his bed to show him his medical file and explain all the notes there, but Blaine’s eyes get stuck at the top of the page.

BLOOD TYPE: O NEGATIVE

And he promptly has a panic attack.

Blaine’s always been _smart_. No, okay, really, really smart. The school’s in this constant state of battle with Mom, trying to get her to let him sit IQ tests, but he doesn’t need a number to know that he’s _smart_. He remembers things.

Like the fact that when he did a project on blood types at the beginning of the year, and he asked his parents what theirs were, Mom told him that she and Dad were A positive and AB positive.

There is no possible way for him to have type O blood if one of his parents is AB.

_BLOOD TYPE: O NEGATIVE_

The words catch up with him unexpectedly, and suddenly his mind is racing a mile a minute, slotting puzzle pieces in wherever he can. His dad isn’t his biological father. How? Adoption? Seems unlikely, given his resemblance to his mother, and there would be a different name on his birth certificate if that were the case. IVF? But why bother? Dad was fertile if Mom’s pregnancy scare when Blaine was six is anything to go by. An affair, then, most likely, but _who_? Someone smart – _just like your father_ – and probably an asshole if he slept with a married woman. An intelligent asshole with type O blood and—

Blaine doesn’t realise he’s forgotten to breathe properly until he hears the doctor counting breaths for him. He comes down from the panic attack feeling worn, like his lungs are on fire, and his ribs hurting.

“You’re safe,” the doctor tells him patiently. “It’s okay. Can you tell me where you are?”

“Westerville Royal Hospital,” Blaine rasps out, and his throat _itches_ with the effort.

“Good,” she assures him. “You’ve just experienced what I think is a panic attack – do you have any idea what might have triggered it?”

Blaine laughs weakly at that, but it quickly dissolves into helpless coughing. Once he has his lungs back under control, he says, “Nothing. Just, you know, discovering my parents have lied to me my entire life.”

The doctor frowns gently at that, looking down at her file as if it will somehow unlock the inner workings of her patient’s brain. Maybe it does. Blaine doesn’t really know that much about medical files.

“I think my mom had an affair,” he tells her.

The doctor – Blaine flicks his eyes over her name badge, reading _Doctor Elizabeth Jones_ and wondering how many Indiana Jones jokes she’s had to put up throughout the duration of her career – makes an ‘ah’ sound, and looks down at her file again. Okay, he is ninety per cent certain that the secrets to how his mind works aren’t in his medical file. Eighty. Eighty-five.

“Blood types,” Blaine explains, because she probably won’t get it unless he does. “Mom’s A, Dad’s AB.”

“And you’re type O,” Dr Jones says, nodding. “Aw, kiddo, that’s gotta suck.”

Blaine shrugs. “Does it make me a bad person if I’m kind of glad?”

“Depends,” Dr Jones says. She pulls up one of the chairs pushed against the left wall of his room and collapses in it. “Not a fan of your dad?”

“Not especially,” Blaine confesses and watches as she nods in sympathy.

“Yeah,” Dr Jones agrees. “I hear you, kiddo. Been there, done that, unfortunately.” She shrugs. “It is what it is, I’m afraid. Sometimes the people we love let us down. That’s just how the world works.”

“You’re not very good at this whole consoling thing,” Blaine tells her shrewdly.

“Not if you want meaningless platitudes,” Dr Jones replies. “Want my advice, though? Talk to your mom. Seriously. See what she has to say about it before you do anything rash. You never know … what do you wanna call your bio-dad?”

Blaine stares at her. “I don’t know, Bob, or something?”

“Well, you never know, Bob could have been a drug dealer or whatever, so maybe you’re better off without him,” Dr Jones continues. She shrugs. “Conversely, Bob could also be a multi-billionaire playboy weapons manufacturer; you never know.”

Blaine raises his eyebrows as he feels his lips twitch upwards. “I highly doubt my mom had an affair with Tony Stark.”

Dr Jones grins. “Be a hell of a story if she did, though, am I right?”

Blaine laughs.

(Blaine really, _really_ hates irony.)

\--

Everyone’s calling it an incident.

It sounds so sterile like that. Trivial.

Incident.

Daniel is dead. This wasn’t an _incident_ ; this was _murder_. He’s not going to break under the weight of one word, so just _say it_.

The police officers who interview him about the attack keep looking at him with pity in their eyes and it nearly drives him up the wall. They do tell him that they have already made several arrests, though, and regardless of their motives, anyone involved is going away for a long time.

It’s not much of a consolation.

On the way home from the hospital, Mom tells Blaine that she’s organising for him to transfer schools to Dalton Academy. She goes on to say that it’s the only school she’s been able to find in Ohio that offers a zero-tolerance no bullying policy, but Blaine’s mind kind of gets stuck on the name.

Dalton Academy. Dalton Academy in Westerville, Ohio. Dalton Academy, currently ranked thirteen of all the schools in the US. _That_ Dalton Academy.

“You can’t do that, Mom,” Blaine cuts in immediately. “You can try and hide it but I know that Dad’s been skimping on the child support—” which Blaine isn’t even sure he’s legally required to pay now that he thinks about it, “—and I know for a fact there’s no way you can afford fifty grand a year in school fees.”

“Blaine,” Mom says, voice stern and determined as they pull up at a set of traffic lights. “I will get the money. Don’t worry about it.”

“From who?” Blaine snorts, then stops. “Oh my God,” he says, realisation dawning. “You’re going to ask _Bob_.”

“Who on earth,” Mom asks incredulously, “is _Bob_?”

Blaine opens his mouth, then closes it. He realises too late that he’s said too much, and even though he’s pretty sure he could talk his way out of this – statistically speaking, they have to know at least _one_ Bob, right? – he doesn’t want to.

Well, there are worse places to have this conversation, he supposes.

“So,” Blaine says awkwardly. “How offended are you likely to be if I ask if you’ve ever had an affair?”

And Mom _freezes_. Her knuckles turn white around the steering wheel. She misses one green light, then two, then three, before she turns in her seat and looks at Blaine with fear and resignation in her eyes. “You know,” she says.

Blaine suppresses a wince. “Kind of.”

“How long? And how—” she stumbles over the word, “—how did you find out?”

“Only since yesterday,” Blaine admits, voice calmer than he feels. “They have my blood type on file. Simple biology. An AB parent can’t have an O child.” Blaine pauses, taking in the way his mother’s face is crumpling before he goes on. “Is it… Is it why Dad left?”

Mom shakes her head, but she says, “He found out the day before your birthday. He was so… I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that angry, Blaine.” She takes in a shuddering breath. “It was only part of the reason, Blaine, and I need you to know that this wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I did this, Blaine, not you. It was all me.”

Mom wipes at her eyes, and, oh God, she’s crying. There are real, actual tears streaming down her face. Blaine is in no way qualified to handle this.

“Carl and I,” Mom forces herself to go on, “we hadn’t had a good marriage for a long time. For a few years, after Cooper, things were great, then… I don’t know. He lost his job. Started drinking. I started work as a bartender – didn’t wear my wedding ring because it meant I got larger tips – and then I met your birth father. He was… He was a hot mess. Not even old enough to drink and already halfway on his way to alcoholism. But he was charming. And he told me I was beautiful. And I guess I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t alone.”

Mom shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have… He was nineteen. His parents had just died, but he was there and I…” She trails off.

Thirty-three to thirty-four years old. Lost his parents at nineteen. Intelligent. Rich. Maybe less of an asshole than Blaine originally assumed.

Blaine is almost too scared to ask. “Mom,” he says. “What was his name?”

“I’m so sorry, Blaine,” Mom says.

“Mom,” Blaine repeats, “what was his name?”

“Tony,” Mom says. “Tony Stark.”

\--

So, Tony Stark.

That’s it.

That’s the joke.

Yeah. Blaine’s not laughing much either. He kind of wants to call Dr Jones and ask her for advice, because she must be the only one who even remotely saw this plot twist coming. Jesus Christ, he’s the illegitimate son of one of America’s richest businessmen. When did his life become a soap opera?

Tony Stark. He can’t stop thinking of him like that, full-name, _Tony Stark._

His mom, his then-thirty year-old mom, slept with a grief-stricken, barely legal Tony Stark. What the hell is he supposed to do with that information? His first instinct in any other situation would be to hit up Google, but he highly doubts that even Google is going to know what to do with discovering your father not only runs a Fortune 500 company, but has also been named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Twice.

Hell, Blaine is an un-certified genius and he has no idea what he’s supposed to do.

Just—Tony Stark.

Fuck it all.

Blaine takes a deep breath in and then lets it out.

Okay. Okay. He can do this. This changes nothing. He’s still Blaine Anderson – even saying Blaine _Stark_ in his head feels weird – and he’s still who he was before he found out about all of this. He’ll be fine. _He can do this._

There’s a knock at Blaine’s bedroom door. He sits up from where he has been lying on the bed, meeting his mom’s eyes as she pops her head around the door a few seconds later. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

Blaine shrugs. “’Bout a two on the pain scale, but it’s logarithmic, so.” He shrugs again.

Mom shakes her head. “You do know that I don’t understand it when you make math jokes, right?” she says, moving more fully into the room. “Carl called.”

Blaine briefly wonders when Carl became Carl, not Dad.

“He heard about the inci—attack.” Blaine pretends not to notice the almost slip-up. “He wants you to go visit him up in Chicago.” She sighs. “Do you want me to tell him where to shove it?”

It’s easy to be disconnected from this whole paternity business, Blaine realises. Because he may have half of Tony Stark’s genes, but at the end of the day, Tony Stark is still just a faraway idea. He’s a truth that hasn’t really sunk in yet, a billionaire thousands of miles away in California.

Carl Anderson is the man that raised him, however poorly, and that’s something.

Fuck biology, Blaine decides. He gets to decide who his father is.

So Blaine shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “I’ll go. Maybe it’ll make him actually remember to send the next spousal support cheque.”

Mom looks at him strangely. “You don’t owe him anything, Blaine,” she says.

Blaine shrugs. “But that’s not really true, is it?”

\--

Chicago in the winter is cold, and Blaine finds he doesn’t mind this. He can hide his still fading bruises beneath layers of scarves and hats and just blend into the background. He’s just another face here, forgettable and anonymous.

It’s nice.

Carl is sober when he meets Blaine at the airport, and as they load Blaine’s bags into the trunk of his car, there’s a moment when Blaine can actually believe that things will be better now. Carl drives them back to his house, a small property crammed between two equally tiny houses with a front lawn covered in a thick layer of snow. The inside is warm and comfortable, though, and there’s Wi-Fi, so Blaine is content.

Then Carl pours himself a large glass of wine with dinner, and Blaine spends the rest of the evening on edge.

The next day, Carl unveils their project for the next three weeks – a ’59 Chevy in need of one heck of a lot of refurbishments – and Blaine can’t suppress a smile.

Despite Blaine’s initial excitement, it turns out badly.

It is, without a doubt, the single most awkward thing Blaine has ever been subjected to, a list which includes explaining to their local librarian why he was checking out books on the human reproductive system (science, it was for science, okay?) and the conversation a couple of days back about the whole Tony Stark Issue. Mostly it’s awkward because Carl really knows fuck all about cars, and for all his enthusiasm about engineering, neither does Blaine. The other part of the awkwardness comes because Carl starts their second day drunk, and almost brains Blaine with engine parts three times in the first hour.

That … that isn’t funny.

Carl shrugs off each near miss with a casual, “Whoops,” but each time it happens, Blaine sees a baseball bat in the place of a carburettor, or a car battery, and he has to force down a panic attack with laugher. Carl doesn’t notice.

Blaine sticks it out until lunch, because he really does love engineering and it is the first time that Carl has ever tried to do something for no other reason than Blaine would enjoy it.

Then the comments start.

_Gettin’ our hands dirty, eh, Blaine? Like real men._

Blaine is an un-certified genius. He can read between the lines.

He calls Mom and goes home three weeks early.

\--

It’s harder to avoid the Tony Stark Issue back in Ohio.

It’s mostly because Ohio contains Mom and Mom is directly linked to the Tony Stark Issue. In fact, the Tony Stark Issue is pretty much entirely Mom’s fault.

(It’s a tiny bit Tony Stark’s fault too, but Blaine has never met the guy, so he’s withholding judgement for now.)

On top of the Tony Stark Issue – or maybe because of it – Mom starts to make Blaine go to therapy. His first therapist is, well, he’s kind of a dick. Blaine spends the entirety of their first meeting figuring out how to get away with murdering Dr Justin Friar, and when he gets out, he makes Mom find him someone else.

His second therapist is a beefy woman named Fiona – “Call me Fi, okay? Can’t stand Fiona – what were my parents thinking?” – is surprisingly not awful, and actually kind of helpful. She looks like she could crush a man’s head with her bare hands, and it’s really, really weird how that makes Blaine feel safe around her.

Fi and Blaine talk a lot in their sessions, mostly about Daniel, sometimes about Carl, and once about Tony Stark.

It’s not like Blaine tells her the full truth about the Tony Stark Issue; he just mentions that he recently found out who his birth father was and it kind of wigged him out. Fi is sympathetic and careful, asking, “Do you want to meet him?” before accepting his answer of, “I don’t know,” and dropping the subject.

As it turns out, despite what he tells Fi, he doesn’t really get a choice.

\--

Mom and Dalton reach an impasse.

Dalton are prepared to accept Blaine as a late transfer, but they don’t have any available scholarships to offer him this late in the school year. Mom is prepared to send Blaine to Dalton, but it’s a lost cause without a scholarship to soften the blow on their carefully balanced budget.

So Mom writes a letter to the Stark Industries legal department.

Blaine doesn’t actually find out about this until after the fact, when she gets a reply back that can roughly be summed up as, “What an interesting and likely fictitious story, Ms Anderson, now if you would be so kind as to send us some of your son’s DNA so we can prove you wrong and be on our merry way,” but, you know. Wordier. And politer. With more lawyer jargon.

Blaine reads over the letter and looks up at Mom, silently asking.

“You don’t have to do it,” Mom says. “Look, I’m not going to lie – I want you in that school, Blaine. I don’t want you to go back to school and have to go back into the closet to stay safe. And I will make it happen. I will get you to that school whatever I have to do, okay? This is just an option.”

“But it’s the easiest one,” Blaine surmises, eyeing the cheek swab that came enclosed in the envelope.

Mom sighs. “Yes, it’s the easiest one,” she relents. “But it’s not the only one.”

Blaine thinks it over for a bit and this is what it comes to: what is he so scared of? Rejection? Loss? You can’t lose what you’ve never had.

Blaine opens his mouth and waits for his mom to take a swab of the inside of his cheek.

\--

In the next two weeks, Blaine lets himself forget about that cheek swab.

Of course, that all gets blown out of the water when Blaine answers the door to find Tony Stark on his doorstep.

\--

Tony Stark in real life is nothing like his Forbes Magazine alter-ego. He’s leaning against the doorframe, a pair of sunglasses held between his teeth, dressed in jeans and an MIT sweatshirt. He drags his eyes up and down Blaine’s form, a light frown touching at his brow. “Huh,” he says. “I figured you’d be taller.”

Blaine snorts, unable to help himself. “Me too.”

Tony Stark’s eyebrows quirk. “Ooh, I like you already,” he says, a grin forming on his lips as he turns behind him. “Hey, Pep, he’s funny. Did you know he was funny? It wasn’t in his file.”

For the first time, Blaine notices the woman stood behind Tony Stark. She’s perhaps an inch shorter than him, dressed in a skirt-suit, ginger hair pulled up into a tight bun on top of her head. She sighs in a manner that tells Blaine that she’s more than used to any and all of Tony Stark’s antics.

“There was no file, Tony,” she says tiredly. “Stop messing with him.”

Tony Stark turns back to Blaine. “Right,” he says. “So, I’m guessing you’re Blaine, then?” At Blaine’s nod, he makes a considering face. “Your mom in?”

“No, she’s at work.” Blaine is very proud at how level his voice comes out.

Tony – and he forces himself to drop the surname – scratches at his goatee thoughtfully. “Do you know why I’m here?” he asks, eyes focused closely on Blaine’s face.

“I can guess.”

“Good,” Tony says. “That’s, uh. That’s good.”

From behind Tony, the redhead rolls her eyes. “Blaine, do you know when your mom will get back from work?” she asks.

This is a question he can answer. Blaine nods. “Around four,” he says, and watches as the redhead nods. “Uh,” he hesitates, then decides to go for it. “Can I ask you a kind of weird question?”

Tony nods. “Shoot.”

“What’s your blood type?”

Tony opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, before turning back to the redheaded woman and asking, “Pepper, what’s my blood type?”

‘Pepper’ rolls her eyes. “O negative, Tony,” she tells him.

Well, Blaine thinks. Fuck.

“So,” Blaine says. “I’m guessing the test came back positive.”

Tony narrows his eyes at Blaine, then, reluctantly almost, nods.

“Oh,” Blaine says, and surprises himself that that’s all he has to say. “Do you want to come in?”

\--

It’s surreal is what it is. Tony Stark – yes, _that_ Tony Stark – is sat in his kitchen, drinking instant coffee, nattering on about God knows what, only breaking for air when the woman Blaine assumes is his PA interrupts with questions pertaining to business. Blaine should film this and sell it to a news outlet; he’d make millions.

Oh. He doesn’t need to. Because Tony Freaking Stark just so happens to be his bio-dad.

“Why are you here?” Blaine cuts across him suddenly, the question that has been growing in the back of his throat finally too large to keep back. “I’m sorry,” he immediately says. “That was rude. Just… I don’t get it.”

Tony takes a gulp of his coffee. Blaine is very impressed that he can stomach the stuff. “What don’t you get, kiddo?”

“Why you’re here,” Blaine goes on, noticing that ‘Pepper’ has put down her phone and is now paying close attention to the conversation. “I mean, why didn’t you just sign a cheque and send it in the mail? I’m sure you have more important things to be doing.”

Tony frowns, and Blaine can’t figure out what he’s said wrong. “Why wouldn’t I be here?” Tony asks instead.

“Uh, you run a company?” Blaine says.

“Debatable,” ‘Pepper’ mutters. Tony shoots her a disparaging look.

“Yeah,” he says, “but you’re my kid. Well, biologically at least. I’m not expecting you to call me ‘Dad’ or anything.”

Oh. When he says it like that, it kind of… Oh.

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Tony, because it seems he may very well be allergic to silence, is the one to break it. “So,” he says awkwardly. “Dalton, huh? Mind if I ask why?”

“Zero-tolerance policy on harassment,” Blaine answers.

“Ah.” Tony takes another long sip of his coffee. “This is so unbelievably weird, do you know? I mean, I was never expecting—and you’re—just, weird. You know my legal department has had funds set aside for something like this ever since I was legal, right? They call it the – Pep, what do they call the Bundle of Stark Fund in the legal department?”

“The Oh God One Was Enough Fund, I think, Tony.”

“Yeah, I need to stop hiring smartasses, I think – make a note.” Tony turns back to Blaine, barrelling on. “So, yeah, Stark Legal have probably been running some kind of betting pool on when I’m going to end up with a love-child, but I guess I just never thought I’d… Wow. And here I thought I could not do worse than _my_ father. At least Howard could string coherent sentences together.”

“You’re doing pretty okay,” Blaine offers. “I had a panic attack when I first found out.”

“I was going to ask how that went for you, actually. Finding out you’re related to a guy with two sex-tapes – probably not fun.” Tony runs his hands over his coffee mug, probably cataloguing how he could make a better one. “A panic attack, seriously? Am I really that bad?”

Blaine winces. “I didn’t know it was you,” he says. “I’d kind of had a bad day up until that point.”

Tony opens his mouth to say something in reply, but ‘Pepper’ yanks him to the side and murmurs something quietly in his ear. Blaine watches Tony’s face darken, then smooth back out into a neutral expression. She’s probably filling him in on the … attack.

“Bad day,” Tony says faintly. “Got it.”

Another silence. It’s Blaine who gets tired of it this time, not prepared to deal with whatever emotions Tony’s processing. “This is going to sound rude,” he starts hesitantly.

Tony snorts. “Well, then, by all means, continue.”

Blaine can’t figure out if that was meant to sound sarcastic or not. “What do you want from all this?” he asks.

Tony sighs, fingers still playing with the coffee mug. “Did you know I have a low sperm count?” He doesn’t wait for a response from Blaine before continuing. “It’s one of the reasons why my lawyers haven’t had to deal with any other paternity issues up until now, and then I get a call from legal telling me that there’s been a positive paternity test and I just … freak. Pepper can tell you I almost had a breakdown there and then.”

“It’s true,” ‘Pepper’ affirms.

“I mean,” and he sounds a little breathless as he goes on, tone stuck between disbelieving joy and all-consuming terror, “I have a son. I have a son. And I’m not father material – God knows anyone who has ever met me can tell you that – but I think, if you will let me, I’d like to try.”

Blaine stares at Tony for a second, then he says, “It’s slightly lopsided.”

Tony blinks at him. “What?”

“The mug,” Blaine explains. “Slightly lopsided. A few degrees off straight. It’s why it’s bothering you – that’s what’s wrong with it.”

Tony looks down to the mug in his hands. “Huh.” Then, “You like science, then?”

Blaine smiles. “Mom says I get it from my dad.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Blaine,” Pepper says. “Blaine, they’ve lost him.”
> 
> Every last millimetre of blood in Blaine’s veins goes cold. “What do you mean, ‘they’ve lost him’?” he asks, voice rising in pitch and volume. “He’s a billionaire with a goatee – I would have thought he’d be pretty damn easy to spot!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deals with the events of IM.
> 
> Warnings: kidnapping (Tony's abduction in Afghanistan)

**Part II**

Fi starts each of the sessions together the same way. She guides him to the couch, offers him a cookie and then asks what’s been happening in his life recently. Blaine likes the routine, likes how it gives him time to relax and gather his thoughts before he has to articulate them.

Today, Blaine has a raisin cookie in his hand when he finally says, “I met my birth father.”

Fi raises one of her eyebrows. “How did that go?”

“Good, I think,” Blaine replies, and it’s the truth. “It was really, really strange, but it was good.” He shrugs. “He wants to try.”

“And do you want to try?” Fi asks.

“I think I do,” Blaine says. “Yeah.”

The overall weirdness is wearing off for Blaine and he’s beginning to find himself able to think of Tony as just that. Tony, his bio-dad from out of town.

“What’s he like?” Fi asks, rubbing the tips of her fingers together absent-mindedly. “A lot like Carl, or different?”

Blaine pauses, considering the question. “He’s smart,” he says eventually. “That’s probably the main thing – just really, really sharp. And short,” Blaine shakes his head. “When I still thought Carl was my bio-dad I always harboured a secret hope that I could get a late growth-spurt like Cooper, but it seems that I’ve been doomed by genetics.”

“Are you worried about seeing him again?”

Blaine shrugs. “Not particularly, I guess? I mean, he lives in California, so it’s not like I’m going to see him often, but he’s sort of … non-threatening, I guess? We text and stuff, and he tries to call once a week, but sometimes he’s busy. And he’s going out of the country on business soon, so.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all under control,” Fi comments.

Blaine shrugs once more, and takes a bite of his cookie.

\--

Two months.

He has known Tony Stark personally for two months and nothing about it has been anything Blaine expected. Tony’s currently footing the bill for Blaine’s Dalton schooling, but other than that and the smartphone, there have been no attempts to buy Blaine’s affection. They speak mostly through text, and sometimes Pepper – and yes, that is actually her preferred name, not just a ridiculous nickname assigned by Tony – calls Blaine to explain why Tony might have missed one of their weekly phone calls.

(The excuses, in order of chronology, so far have been: ‘forgot to sleep and is currently catching up on a sleep deficit of three days’, ‘in a board meeting and I’m not about to give him an excuse to leave’, and ‘I don’t think he even knows what day of the week it is right now’. She delivers each of them with a firm air of fond exasperation and promises to make Tony call later. Blaine kind of adores Pepper.)

So the Tony Stark Issue has become less of an Issue and more of an issue and with it, many of the other things in Blaine’s life have started to level out.

Blaine sat his first IQ test a few weeks back – Mom finally letting up on her blanket ban on any and all things that remind her of Tony Stark – and the results made Dalton’s elderly secretary frown, check their glasses, and then declare that there must have been some kind of mistake. The main result of this is that Blaine spent the afternoon of his first day at Dalton in a meeting with the head of Dalton’s math department, discussing ways that they can ensure he is suitably stretched and challenged whilst at the school.

His timetable was a mess by the end of the negotiations – a disastrous mix of higher level classes in math and science and lower level ones in languages and humanities, something which Blaine has no idea how they managed to put together – and it’s led to Blaine’s current eclectic group of friends: Wes, a junior; David, a sophomore; Nick and Jeff, freshmen; and Taylor, a belligerent senior who spends most of his time with Blaine rolling his eyes.

And then there’s show choir. Blaine honestly didn’t expect to get roped into show choir (of all things) but four fifths of his friendship group are in the Warblers, and Blaine can sing reasonably well, so maybe it was a foregone conclusion. The only problem with show choir, though, is that they have to perform.

A lot.

Which tends to mean getting up early to trek across the state to their performance venues.

Which tends to mean that Blaine ends up sleeping in late on the weekends in order to try and make up for getting back late the night before.

Which means that Blaine is ready to _murder_ whoever has the nerve to interrupt his lie-in before he’s ready to be woken up.

And, for fuck’s sake, would it shut up?

Blaine rolls over in bed and snatches his phone up from the bedside table. He’s about to hit ‘reject call’ when he spots the caller ID.

INCOMING CALL: BOB

Blaine sighs and answers it. “Hello?”

“Hey, kiddo.”

Blaine presses the phone to his cheek and rolls over in bed, pulling the duvet tighter around him. “Aren’t you supposed to be halfway around the world right now?” he asks groggily, checking the time. _12:06_ , huh. He didn’t mean to sleep that late.

“ _You’ve been spending too much time with Pepper_ ,” comes Tony’s instant reply. “ _I’m headed to the airport right now – no lectures required._ ”

Blaine forces his eyes open, focusing on the ceiling, and stifles a yawn. “So this is you calling to say goodbye before you jet off?”

“ _Pretty much_ ,” Tony confirms. “ _This is also my Sorry I Can’t Make Your Karaoke Thing Call._ ”

“Show choir, Tony,” Blaine sighs. “Show choir.”

“ _Whatever. I can’t be there. The board will literally have my head if I’m not there to close this sale. The future of Stark Industries rests upon my weary shoulders, Blaine_.”

Blaine snorts. “Hope you don’t get back ache, old man.”

“ _Old? OLD?_ ” Tony sputters. “ _I’m thirty-four, you little runt!_ ”

“Both of us are going to lose if you bring height into this, Tony,” Blaine points out calmly, feeling more and more awake with every word.

“ _Don’t you sass me from across the country, Blaine Devon—_ ”

“It is safe, isn’t it?” Blaine cuts across him suddenly.

Tony, thankfully, does not try to play dumb. “ _Yeah, kiddo. It’s safe._ ”

“It’s just, you’re flying out into a _warzone_ , and—”

“ _Blaine, trust me_ ,” Tony says. “ _It’s safe. I’m going to be surrounded by armed soldiers at all times and I’ll be lucky if Rhodey lets me out of his sight for even a second_.”

“Rhodey?”

“ _Stark Industries’ military liaison. We’ve known each other since we met at MIT._ ”

“Right,” Blaine says.

On the other end of the line, Tony sighs. “ _Blaine, I promise, it will be fine. It’ll be back in California before you know it._ ”

“Drinking too much booze and skipping out on award ceremonies to gamble?”

“ _Okay, definitely too much time with Pepper. When I get back, I’m suspending your Pepper privileges and we’re going to have a long talk about positive influences_.”

Blaine manages a small smile. “Right,” he says. “Positive influences, got it.”

“ _Stay awesome, kiddo_.”

“You too, Tony.”

The call ends almost too abruptly, and Blaine stares down at his phone. It’s a prototype apparently, something that Tony has been messing around with in his spare time, but it works like nothing Blaine’s ever come across before. Scrawled across the back in Sharpie are the words _STARKPHONE V1.0_ in Tony’s haphazard engineer’s script. Blaine has the distinct impression that it’s one of a kind.

Blaine shakes his head, flickering his eyes back to the clock. _12:11_. He really should get up, he supposes.

Blaine throws his phone away and rolls over to go back to sleep.

\--

“ _Blaine, I promise, it’ll be fine. I’ll be back in California before you know it._ ”

Irony is really doing nothing to endear itself to Blaine at all, is it?

\--

The call comes in the middle of French, and has Mme Kim glaring at him two seconds into the obnoxious ringtone that Tony set up for Pepper on Blaine’s phone. He makes a face at Mme Kim that he hopes is an appropriate combination of sheepish and apologetic and gets up from his seat to take the call.

He is not expecting to be greeted by a sob. “ _Blaine,_ ” Pepper gets out, her voice trembling over the syllable.

Blaine stands up a little taller. “Pepper, what’s wrong?”

“ _Blaine_ ,” Pepper says. “ _Blaine, they’ve lost him_.”

Every last millimetre of blood in Blaine’s veins goes cold. “What do you mean, ‘they’ve lost him’?” he asks, voice rising in pitch and volume. “He’s a billionaire with a goatee – I would have thought he’d be pretty damn easy to spot!”

Pepper sniffs on the other end of the line, breath shaky. “ _His convoy was attacked by hostiles_ ,” she says and it must be a struggle to get each word out. “ _We’re waiting on a ransom call, but Mr Stane doesn’t think it will come._ ”

Blaine dimly catalogues ‘Mr Stane’ as Obadiah Stane, the old CEO of Stark Industries, but he can’t quite process that right now. “Oh my God,” he says instead, the words feeling dead and heavy in his mouth.

Pepper takes in a steadying breath. “ _We’ve got another hour before this hits the newsstands_ ,” she says, sounding more like her old self. “ _I just… I wanted you to be prepared. Unless someone starts a nuclear war in the next sixty minutes, this is going to be all anyone can talk about._ ”

“And here I thought I would never hope for World War III to break out,” Blaine says, trying to inject his voice with humour.

“ _Tony will do that to you_ ,” Pepper agrees.

“Pepper,” Blaine asks suddenly. “Are you okay?”

“ _I’m fine, Blaine_ ,” Pepper assures him. “ _I’ll be fine. I just need to get busy, you know? Mr Stane’s been talking about the stock drop and I guess it just hit me that he could be…_ ”

“Don’t say it.”

Pepper doesn’t. “ _I’m sorry,_ ” she says. “ _I’m sorry. God, I’m such a mess. You do not need this right now_.”

“Pepper, it’s okay.” (It’s not.) “He’s Tony Stark, right? He’s going to turn up in a week and tell us all off for crying and say that my Caltech dreams are sacrilege again, okay?”

“ _Okay._ ”

“It’ll be okay, Pepper, I promise.”

Blaine wonders if it’s a Stark thing, to make promises that you can’t keep.

\--

The first week is the worst.

Unfortunately, no one does start World War III, so all the news channels are talking about is Tony Stark and his mysterious abduction in Afghanistan, and _what does this mean for the future of Stark Industries?_ They show a couple of clips of an old man talking – Obadiah Stane, Blaine’s mind supplies – who tells them that he’ll be standing in for Tony for now, and who assures their stockholders not to worry too much. Blaine kind of wants to punch him, even though he knows that’s not fair. He’s just doing his job.

Pepper calls a lot. It’s good, really, to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to lose Tony Stark, the person, not Tony Stark, the businessman. She keeps him apprised of the rescue effort, even though there’s not much news to report. Blaine tries not to let that dishearten him.

Blaine changes Tony’s caller ID from Bob to Tony to Bob, back to Tony again, then spends five minutes staring at the messy _STARKPHONE V1.0_ before he bursts into tears. He ends up calling Tony’s voicemail just to hear his father’s voice telling him to leave a message after the tone, but hanging up before he says anything.

Mom doesn’t know how to deal with Blaine. She acts uncertain about him, and it’s like the first day after he came back from the hospital, fresh with the realisation about his true paternity, before she knew which words to avoid and which actions were triggers. She gives him a wide-berth, seemingly of the opinion that if Blaine needs her, he knows where to find her, and Blaine is secretly thankful to her for this. He needs space. He needs to think. He just needs …

God, he misses his dad.

Therapy doesn’t help.

It feels weird saying that, because it’s the first time therapy _hasn’t_ helped for Blaine, and it’s wholeheartedly frustrating. Fi makes comments, sometimes, gently probing, asking if he’s been sleeping well and taking care of himself, and Blaine knows that she’s looking for him to fill her in, but he can’t. He just _can’t_. He trusts Fi, but he doesn’t trust her with this.

Blaine doesn’t know whether to grieve or hope, and that’s probably the worst thing.

As always, though, the ache dulls.

The first week is the hardest, but after that, things get easier. He finds coping mechanisms, things to push his mind away from Tony. His grades skyrocket, and he works on improving his voice for the Warblers. Both of them are hard work, but in case they don’t take up all his time, he picks up boxing.

Boxing is good. His therapist had actually suggested it a while back, as a way to deal with the attack, and Blaine almost wishes he had started sooner.

Sometimes, it’s him that calls Pepper. Sometimes, she calls him. She’s all Blaine has left, he realises, of Tony Stark, and it may be selfish but he can’t let her go.

(He’s all she has left of Tony too, and that is why she does not try to force him.)

\--

It takes ninety-four days.

\--

Because Tony is Tony Stark and capable of being a pain in the ass from anywhere in the universe, the calls comes at forty-two minutes past three in the morning. Blaine picks it up on nothing more than instinct, barely opening his eyes to look at the words _UNKNOWN NUMBER_ on his phone screen.

“ _Hey, kiddo._ ”

And his heart stops. “Dad?” His brain kicks into function. “Oh my God, Dad!”

“ _Hey, Blaine_.” Tony sounds exhausted and a bit raspy, but he’s _there_. This can’t be a dream. It _can’t_.

“You’re alive,” Blaine manages and then berates himself for how stupid it sounds.

Tony doesn’t comment. “ _And kicking,_ ” he replies. “ _Sorry about the radio silence – you would not believe the shitty coverage you get in the desert_.”

Blaine wants to laugh and cry all at once. “That’s not funny,” he says, voice strangled.

“ _Really? Huh. Guess I’m losing my touch._ ”

“Are you okay?” Blaine is sitting up in bed now, turning on the light beside his bed and propping his pillow up behind his back.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Tony says. “ _On my way back stateside as we speak._ ”

“You sound…” Blaine trails off, looking for a suitably tactful word. “Tired.”

“ _And dehydrated and malnourished, if you would believe the doctors on board_ ,” Tony agrees lightly. There’s a quiet ruffle, like Tony’s holding the phone against some cloth, before his voice comes back muted. “ _No, Rhodey, you may not ask who I’m talking to_.” A pause, filled with distant sounds of speech. “ _What sort of question is that? I’m fine_.”

When Tony has the phone back to his ear, Blaine asks, “Have you called Pepper?”

“ _Next on the list, kiddo._ ”

“What time do you land in the US?”

Tony snorts, then spends a couple of seconds coughing. “ _No clue_ ,” he says. “ _We’ll be landing at the airbase in California, though, if you want to fly out and meet me._ ”

Blaine can’t stop the giddy smile that takes over his face. “What sort of question is that?”

Tony laughs, then cuts it off with a moan of pain.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “You need to call Pepper and probably take some stronger meds.”

“ _Roger that_ ,” Tony groans.

“I love you.”

There’s a long pause, then Tony says, “ _Love you too, kiddo._ ”

After the phone call has ended, Blaine changes Tony’s old caller ID to ‘Dad’.

\--

_Dude, Ms Dubont said you’re taking a couple of days off to deal with ‘family issues’. You okay, man?_

Then, _HOLY SHITBALLS BATMAN! Have you seen the news???? THEY FOUND TONY STARK ALIVE? Fucker’s like a cockroach, I STG._

And, of course, Blaine’s new favourite, _Sorry, sorry, probably not appropriate to have sent that if your uncle or whatever is dying._

The entire string of texts is so utterly Jeff that Blaine can’t help but grin at his phone screen. He’s kind of wired at the moment, his mind _buzzing_ as he sits next to Pepper in the car, nervously nibbling at the granola bar Pepper had made him buy when she found out he hadn’t had any breakfast that day.

Desperate for distraction, Blaine taps the reply button on his phone screen. _No one’s dying_ , he types back. _Visiting my dad. It’s complicated._

 _Dude, this isn’t a facebook status_ , Jeff sends back. _Thought you didn’t like Carl, though._

_Not Carl – my bio-dad. Like I said: complicated._

“We’re here, Miss Potts,” the driver – Pepper had introduced him as Harold Hogan, Blaine remembers – announces. “According to Colonel Rhodes, the aircraft should be arriving in the next five minutes.”

“Thank you, Happy,” Pepper says demurely. She turns to Blaine. “You ready for this, Blaine?”

Blaine smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”

His phone buzzes with a reply from Jeff, but he doesn’t check it.

“Good,” Pepper smiles.

\--

The first words Tony says when he gets off the plane, somehow expertly put together in a tailored blue suit, are, “Miss me, kiddo?”

Blaine ignores the arm in the sling and throws himself at Tony, crushing them together in a long hug. “What sort of question is that?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Yeah, okay. Points to you, kiddo.”

When they break apart, Tony turns to Pepper. “What’s with the red eyes?” he asks. “A few tears for your long lost boss?”

“Tears of joy,” Pepper replies. “I hatejob-hunting.”

Tony smiles at her, then turns back to Blaine. “Is this what you’ve been getting up to while I’ve been away?” he asks. “Hanging out with Pepper? I haven’t forgotten our scheduled talk about positive influences, I hope you realise. There will be discussions.”

Blaine wants to laugh, but he can only manage a weak smile. “Sure, Dad,” he says.

Tony claps a hand down on Blaine’s shoulder, a lightly steadying influence. “Playtime’s over,” he says, sounding serious. “We’ve got things to do.”

Pepper nods. “I’ve scheduled you to see a specialist at Malibu Memo—”

“No hospitals,” Tony cuts across her. “I’ve been in captivity for three months; there are only three things I want right now. First, is a cheeseburger. Second, a press conference. Third, to find out what’s been happening in my son’s life.”

“Tony,” Pepper says, in a tone of voice that she seems to reserve solely for Blaine’s dad.

“No discussions,” Tony says, steering them towards the car. “Hogan, know where we can find a good cheeseburger at this hour?”

\--

Okay, so that happened.

 _That_ , of course, being that in the process of ten minutes, Blaine was introduced to Obadiah Stane – as Pepper’s nephew, no less – and then shoved to the back of the hall with Pepper, and then made to watch his father make headlines with the phrase, “Effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries.”

Yeah, that.

At the end of the conference, Pepper puts an arm around Blaine and says, “We should probably get you home.” There’s something strained in her voice, like she’s already cataloguing the sheer volume of paperwork that this will cause.

“Yeah,” Blaine agrees faintly.

\--

Things almost go back to normal after that. It shouldn’t be normal, Blaine thinks, but Tony texts, and Tony calls, and it’s pretty much routine.

\--

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _What’s the gamma factor formula?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _1/SQRT[1-(v/c)^2]  
 **DAD:** Doing physics homework?_

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Yeah. Turns out there’s only so much leeway teachers will give you after you after the ‘father kidnapped by terrorists’ excuse goes passes its use-by date._

 **_DAD:_ ** _That sucks. You try turning on the waterworks?_

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Yeah. No dice, I’m afraid.  
 **OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:** So what’s up? Mr Stane looked like he was going to murder you after your announcement at the press conference._

 **_DAD:_ ** _Obi wouldn’t do something that drastic. He’s pretty pissed about the stock drop, though._

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Well, fifty-six points is pretty impressive. I’ll give you that much._

 **_DAD:_ ** _Suspending your Pepper privileges, I’m serious, Blaine._

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Please. You’re just jealous that we bonded while you were away._

 **_DAD:_ ** _If by ‘away’ do you mean held hostage in a warzone._

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Are you trying to guilt-trip me?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _Depends. Is it working?_

 **_OH GOD ONE WAS ENOUGH:_ ** _Yes. Damnit._

\--

**_DAD:_ ** _This may seem like a bit of a weird request, but I’m probably going to need your phone back._   
_**DAD:** Only for a couple of days, though. Just to get some data and work out the rest of the kinks in the design._   
_**DAD:** Turns out that when you shut down the main income generator for your company, you need to have some idea of what to do to make money now._

**_STARK MARK II:_ ** _Huh. Never would have figured that.  
 **STARK MARK II:** Yeah, sure, you can have the phone back for a bit. I’ll just put the micro-SIM into an iPhone or something._

**_DAD:_ ** _I seriously hope that was a joke._   
_**DAD:** Blaine?_   
_**DAD:** BLAINE I STG IF YOU PUT THAT SIM ANYWHERE NEAR AN APPLE PRODUCT I WILL WRITE YOU OUT OF MY WILL_

\--

 **_SWEET CHILD O’ MINE:_ ** _Look what came in the mail today!_  
 **SWEET CHILD O’ MINE:**  
 

 **_DAD:_ ** _That better not be what I think it is.  
 **DAD:** Blaine…_

 **_SWEET CHILD O’ MINE:_ ** _¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 **_DAD:_ ** _I am serious about the will, Blaine._

\--

 **_DAD:_ ** _I love you, kiddo._

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _Dad?_

\--

**_BLAINE:_ ** _Dad, I heard about the reactor explosion at SI HQ. Are you OK?_   
_**BLAINE:** Dad?_   
_**BLAINE:** Dad?_   
_**BLAINE:** Dad, if you don’t reply I am calling Pepper, I swear to God._   
_**BLAINE:** Dad, Pepper isn’t picking up her phone. Pepper always picks up her phone. What’s going on?_   
_**BLAINE:** Dad, please just answer me._   
_**BLAINE:** Dad?_

\--

 **_DAD:_ ** _Hey, Blaine. I’m pretty sure you’re asleep now, but I only just got your texts. Sorry for not replying, but Pep and I were stuck in a government debriefing about the reactor explosion. No phones allowed. I mean, I tried, but they literally confiscated them. There’s gonna be a press conference about what happened, so if you want to know more, I’d tune into that. It should be on pretty much every major news channel around 4pm your time.  
 **DAD:** I love you, okay? Stay safe._

\--

It wasn’t too hard for Blaine to find a live-feed to Tony’s press conference; it’s being covered by pretty much every major news network. He has it up in the background, something to pay half-attention to as he works through his history homework.

“ _The truth is_ ,” Blaine hears Tony say, and then pause. Blaine looks up briefly at the screen and notes how tired his father looks.

“ _The truth is_ ,” the Tony on screen says, “ _I am Iron Man._ ”

The world erupts into chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, IM2, and Kuuuuuuuurt


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are three people in Blaine’s life who have managed to know his world on its axis. The first is Daniel, with his tanned skin and dark grin, infallible in every way, until he wasn’t. The second is Tony Stark, who is probably incapable of entering anyone’s life in a way that is anything less than dramatic.
> 
> The last, of course, is Kurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. I return. Yeah. Boom. Look at me. Getting this chapter out like a boss. Kickass, that I am.
> 
> This was written in between studying for mocks. Because I am a terrible person who does not study for their mocks.
> 
> I don't think there are any warnings to deal with this part? Anyway, we cover IM2 and Kuuuuuuurt in this piece. I hope you enjoy.

**Part III**

“So,” Mom says as she puts her knife and fork down. “I think you should tell Fi.”

Blaine raises his eyebrows above his glass of water. “I think you’re going to have to be a little bit more specific,” he says. “Tell Fi what?”

Mom exhales. “I think you should tell Fi about the identity of your birth father,” she says, and before he can reply, picks up her plate and carries it through to the kitchen.

Blaine blinks once, twice, then grabs his plate and dashes after her. “Wait, what?”

“It’s been stressful for you,” Mom explains, loading the plate into the dishwasher. She holds out a hand for Blaine’s and he hands it over. “Especially since Tony came out as Iron Man, _and_ ,” she talks over his silent protestations, “I’m not saying that you can’t handle it, but I worry. I would sleep easier knowing that you had someone to talk to about all of this.”

“I have Pepper,” Blaine points out, slightly petulant.

“Pepper,” Mom says, “is, for all her skills, not a trained therapist specialising in teenagers, whereas Fi is.” She draws herself up to her full diminutive height and fixes Blaine with a dead stare. “I know what it is like for Tony Stark to be a part of your life, Blaine, and I know what it is like to keep it secret. Tell Fi.”

“She’s not going to believe me,” Blaine says.

Mom shrugs. “It’s not the most unbelievable thing.”

\--

Telling Fi was going to be awkward no matter what Blaine said, so eventually he settles for a calm, “So you know my birth father from out of town? Tony Stark,” and then waits to see the reaction on Fi’s face.

It’s the first time that Blaine has ever been able to break through her calm mask, and he watches her jaw drop, then close again. Fi is silent for a moment, then she shakes her head.

“I could believe that,” she says, and Blaine concedes the victory to his mother.

\--

“Are you kidding?” David demands, staring at Blaine in open-mouthed shock. “Because this is either a really cruel joke or the best thing I have heard all year.”

Blaine shakes his head, unable to stop the smile on his face. “No joke,” he says.

“Blaine,” David says, “the tickets sold out within thirty minutes of the website going live, and you’re telling me that you have _two tickets_ to the opening ceremony of _Stark Expo_?”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Blaine tells David seriously. “I could ask Wes, you know.”

Blaine had initially asked David because he actually shows an interest in science and innovation, and because as a music scholar, he is relatively sure that there would be no opportunity for him to go otherwise. “No,” David rushes to say. “No, it’s just – how on _earth_ did you get these?”

Blaine shrugs. “I have an aunt who works for Stark Industries,” he says, giving the excuse Pepper had told him to use whenever in a situation like this. It had been helpful to explain why Blaine had had a StarkPhone for a year before they were even announced, even if he doesn’t think it convinced everyone. “She knows Mr Stark personally, so.” He shrugs.

“I could _kiss_ your aunt,” David says seriously.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Blaine replies. There is more to it than the initial ick factor of picturing David kissing Pepper; things between Tony and Pepper have been really weird recently. Blaine is honestly not sure if they’re dating, or fucking, or dancing around each other, and he values his sanity enough not to ask.

“Don’t you want to take your mom?” David suddenly asks. “I can’t imagine her being too pleased with watching her fifteen year-old son jetting off to California on his own.”

Blaine shrugs. “Not Mom’s kind of thing,” he says honestly. “She’s more of a stay at home, catch up on _The Mentalist_ type of person.” He sighs. “ _And_ , I won’t be on my own, right?”

David grins. “Right.”

\--

Stark Expo is ridiculous in its entirety, extravagantly over the top and so very _Tony Stark_ that Blaine can almost see why his mom was so determined to keep him away all those years. David enjoys every second of it, dragging Blaine through the exhibits with a single-minded enthusiasm that is sort of admirable and more than a little tiring.

Blaine, for his part, wanders through the place, only stopping to read the things that truly catch his attention, like a display from OsCorp on optimising cellular regeneration in humans. Biology isn’t usually his port of call, but the description is pretty accessible and the science behind it incredible.

It makes for an interesting read, at least until David practically yanks his arm out of the socket to drag Blaine to the display on arc reactor technology.

When he flew out to see Tony on his birthday, Blaine found himself subjected to an in-depth lecture on just how the device worked. He only understood one word for every five that Tony said, but it was enough to get more than a superficial grasp on the technology. After a quick glance at the board ends with Blaine confirming his suspicions – there’s nothing more than the bare basics of the science here – he makes his excuses to David and ducks to the side.

Blaine whips out his phone – the same old prototype as he started using just under a year ago – and taps out, _Where are you?_ He scrolls down his list of contacts until he reaches ‘I AM IRON MAN’ and hits send.

Almost immediately, Tony sends back, _Backstage with Pepper. About to head back home. Wanna come?_

Blaine glances over at David, before typing, _Sure. But I won’t be able to stay long. Can’t leave David alone for too long._

_Deal_ , Tony sends back.

Blaine smiles, and locks his phone screen, before he walks back to David and taps him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “My aunt just got done for the evening. I was going to go see her. Want to come?”

David shakes his head. “No offence to your aunt, but I only have tonight to look around this place.”

“Are you going to be okay on your own?”

David snorts. “Blaine, at Stark Expo, you are _never_ alone.” He nods over at the veritable legion of security guards on duty.

“He doesn’t do anything by halves,” Blaine mutters. Louder, he says, “If you need me, I’ll have my phone.”

“Sure, sure.” David waves him off. “Go visit your aunt, Superstar.”

“Great,” Blaine says, shifting on his feet. “See you around, then.”

\--

Tony greets him with a  wide-armed hug, ruffling his hair and then complaining about the amount of gel he has stuck in it. It’s familiar and easy, and Blaine feels himself relax into the flow of their conversation. Tony asks about school – as always – and then spends ten minutes recounting what must have been an especially wild night from his MIT days.

(No, seriously, if Blaine even gets up to _half_ the stuff Tony appears to have tried in his teens, he wagers his mother would have a heart attack.)

“I have something I want to give you,” Tony says suddenly. Blaine watches in mild confusion as Tony digs in his pants pocket and pulls out a long silver chain, and then a large weight on the end of it. Tony pushes it into Blaine’s hands.

“It’s a pocket watch,” Tony explains, as if Blaine weren’t capable of seeing that for himself. “It belonged to my dad.”

And, oh.

That is … Blaine doesn’t know what to do with that. Tony’s relationship with the late Howard Stark is something that Blaine doesn’t really understand, besides the fact that Tony would have _killed_ to have with his father what Blaine has with him.

“He sent it to me on my eighteenth birthday,” Tony goes on. “No note, just the watch. I guess it was meant to be some kind of coming of age present, but I never got to ask.” He shrugs. “I want you to have it.”

“Dad,” Blaine starts to say, but Tony cuts across him.

“This isn’t for that,” he says. “It’s not some half-hearted attempt at a father-son tradition. I just – I want you to have this watch, so that even when I’m not there – and let’s face it, kiddo, that’s pretty often – you know I’m proud of you. I love you and I’m proud of you and nothing’s ever going to change that.”

Blaine doesn’t say anything in return to that, just reaches his arms around his dad’s shoulders and crushes them into a hug.

“Okay,” Tony says after a couple of minutes. “This is getting awkward. All these feelings are damaging my fragile masculinity.”

Blaine pulls back and smacks him lightly on the arm.

“Ow!” Tony exclaims, then makes a sharp gesture. “See – masculinity damaged. I’m going to need to go smash some things so that I—”

Blaine smacks him again.

\--

“Pepper is pissed at you, by the way,” Blaine says into his phone as he plays with the pocket watch.

On the other end of the line, Tony snorts. “ _When is she not?_ ”

Blaine tips his head back, lying down further in the window seat. It’s nearing the end of lunch break and he really should be getting ready for the Warbler performance down in the commons, given that it’s his first solo and all, but Tony had called three minutes ago, and there’s no way he’s putting the phone down until the last possible minute.

“Sometimes she finds your antics endearing,” Blaine replies. “Though I think she’s in a minority there.”

“ _You two can form a club, I’m sure._ ” Tony sighs, before the sound is overcome by a loud crash. “ _Oh fuck. Dummy, you can’t—just, stop, you worthless hunk of trash._ ” Another sigh.“ _I swear to God, sometimes I think I must have been drunk when I programmed these things._ ”

“Sounds like it’s getting pretty wild over there,” Blaine comments.

“ _Yeah, the lonely old man and his robots – it’s a party alright_.”

Blaine rolls his eyes. “Dad, you’re not even thirty-five yet. If that’s old for you, I worry about you surviving the rest of your life.” Before Tony can reply to that, though, Blaine’s eyes catch on the time. “I really should go now, Dad,” he says. “The Warblers are performing and I’ve got the solo this time.”

“ _Let’s pretend I said something witty and show choir-related,_ ” Tony says in reply leaving the ‘because I know fuck all about show choir’unsaid. “ _You’re going to kill it, kiddo._ ”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Blaine hits ‘end call’ and snaps the pocket watch shut. Showtime. (Cue jazz hands.)

\--

There are three people in Blaine’s life who have managed to know his world on its axis. The first is Daniel, with his tanned skin and dark grin, infallible in every way, until he wasn’t. The second is Tony Stark, who is probably incapable of entering anyone’s life in a way that is anything less than dramatic.

The last, of course, is Kurt.

Later, Blaine will look back on his meeting with Kurt and think of it as romantic. At the time, it feels mundane, a tap on the shoulder as he checks the time on his pocket watch. He turns, snapping the lid of the watch shut, and morphs his features into a politely questioning expression.

“Hi,” Kurt says. “Can I ask you a question? I’m new here.”

\--

**_BLAINE:_ ** _Courage._

\--

Blaine is in the Junior Common Room at Dalton when he finds out. A group of students have the television on in the background, set to a twenty-four hour news channel, but Blaine isn’t paying much attention to it. He’s crowded close to Nick across the room, a sophomore chemistry textbook open between them, Blaine trying to help Nick get the A he needs in his upcoming chem test.

“Okay,” Blaine says, speaking loud enough that he can be heard above the sound of the television. “So, imagine that your polymer chains are spaghetti. When you cook spaghetti and serve it up, there are regions where it’s all aligned and neatly packed, and regions where it’s just kind of random, right? The closely packed areas are crystalline, and the random ones are—”

“Oh my God,” Nick lets out suddenly, eyes fixed on the television behind Blaine.

Blaine turns.

And stops.

“ _—Not much is known of the criminal responsible for the attack, but witnesses say that he targeted the Stark formula one car, being driven at the time by Tony Stark—_ ”

Okay, Blaine thinks. Control the breaths. He can do this. He’s Blaine Anderson. He can do this. Think, Blaine. Think.

Call Tony—he’s got to call Tony—okay, phone, where is his phone—oh God it’s not in his pocket, where is his phone, where is it, where is it—in his room, he left it at home today—oh God, he needs to call Tony, he needs to call him now—okay, someone else will have a phone—calm, Blaine, calm, be _calm_ —

“Nick,” Blaine says urgently. “Can I borrow your cell?”

Nick nods, completely absorbed in the news report, and withdraws his cell from his blazer pocket. He holds it out and Blaine snatches it away, shooting up from the sofa and punching in the number for Tony’s cell.

He almost cries when the call picks up. “Oh my God,” Blaine rushes out. “ _Dad_.”

There’s a pause on the other end, then, “ _I think you may have gotten the wrong number._ ”

And Blaine’s heart plummets. That’s not Tony; it’s not even a man’s voice. He doesn’t recognise it at all, but he checks the number he’s dialled and sure enough, it’s Tony’s cell. “Who is this?” Blaine asks, and his voice definitely does not crack.

“ _Natalie Rushman_ ,” comes the immediate answer, clipped and professional. “ _I work as a personal assistant for Mr Stark, whose phone you have just called_.”

Work.

She said _work._

Present tense. Blaine clings to that. Tony’s still alive. He may be injured, if the fact that there’s a complete stranger answering his personal cell is any indicator, but he’s _alive._ Blaine can work with that. He takes a steadying breath, and then, when he’s certain that he can open his mouth without dissolving into a panic attack, he speaks again.

“Is Pepper there?” he asks. “Um, Pepper Potts – Mr Stark’s old PA?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Ms Rushman replies. “ _Can I get a name, so that I can tell Miss Potts who it is that wishes to speak to her?_ ”

“Tell her it’s Blaine,” he says, and as the panic drops out of him, so does the energy. He sinks to the floor, resting his head against the wall as Ms Rushman hands the phone over to Pepper.

“ _He’s fine, Blaine_ ,” are Pepper’s first words. “ _A little bruised, a lot angry, but he’s fine._ ”

Blaine could laugh with relief. “Good,” he breathes. “That’s good. Are you okay?”

“ _As okay as can be expected_ ,” is Pepper’s non-answer. She sighs. “ _One of these days, I’m going to drive a stiletto through Tony’s temple, just so that he can’t terrify me like this anymore._ ”

Blaine’s hand finds the old pocket watch in his pants pocket. “I’ll swear up and down it was justified,” he promises. “So, who is Natalie Rushman?”

Blaine can practically feel Pepper rolling her eyes down the line. “ _She’s Tony’s new PA_ ,” Pepper says.

“Did he fire you?” Blaine asks. “Because that would probably be the stupidest thing he’s done to date, including driving a race-car – why was he driving a race-car?”

“ _Why does Tony ever do anything?_ ” Pepper sighs. “ _And he didn’t fire me, Blaine. I’m the new CEO of Stark Industries. It was all over the news a few days ago; we thought you knew._ ”

Blaine scrunches up his nose. He tries to avoid reading the news on Tony, because there are a lot of things discussed in the articles that Blaine would honestly be happy without knowing. He is happy for Pepper, though, and he’s sure she’ll be a kickass CEO, or whatever it is that CEOs need to be good at their jobs.

“Congratulations,” Blaine tells her sincerely.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Pepper replies. “ _I don’t want to force you off the phone too early, but if you’ve heard about this, it means I need to get on top of damage control. I hate my fucking job._ ”

“You _love_ your job,” Blaine corrects.

“ _God knows why_ ,” Pepper mutters. “ _Do you want me to tell Tony anything?_ ”

“Tell him he’s an idiot,” Blaine says, “and that I love him in spite of it.”

“ _Got it._ ”

“Thank you, Pepper.”

“ _Stay safe, Blaine._ ”

\--

Kurt’s problems are a welcome respite from Dalton’s incessant chatter about the attack on Tony, and Blaine quickly accepts Kurt’s offer to drive down to Lima to hang out. The drive down is good for Blaine, and he finds his mind slowly draining away his worries about his father, focuses instead on the prospect of catching up with Kurt.

Kurt opens his front door with an eager, “I have something to show you.”

Blaine blinks. “Hi, Kurt,” he says.

“Hello, Blaine,” Kurt says, rolling his eyes and tugging Blaine inside. “Come on, come on, I’ve been waiting all week to show it to you.”

Blaine is beginning to get worried – the last time that someone was this insistent about show-and-tell, it was Tony showing him the electromagnethe had _surgically implanted in his chest_ – but he obediently lets Kurt pulls him upstairs to his room. Kurt crosses the space in two long strides, then pulls open his closet doors with a flourish, revealing…

“Is that a Dalton blazer?” Blaine asks. He turns to Kurt, who is biting on his lip to smother a grin. “Why do you have a Dalton blazer? Are you transferring?”

Kurt nods. “Yeah,” he says. “The paperwork went through on Thursday, so.” He waves a hand at the blazer. “I’m lamenting the loss of my ability to showcase my wardrobe.”

“Don’t lie,” Blaine says. “You love the blazer.”

Kurt mumbles something that sounds like, “On you, maybe,” but Blaine couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Blaine says, “I’m sorry you have to leave your friends at McKinley, but I’m really looking forward to being able to see you every day.” Suddenly, Blaine’s grin drops off his face. “Wait, how can you afford this? I mean, Dalton’s fees are off the charts, Kurt, and, I mean—”

“I got a scholarship,” Kurt confesses, throwing Blaine for a moment. “From the, uh, Daniel Yates Initiative?” He shrugs. “Dad found them online. They’re an offshoot from the Maria Stark Foundation who help kids that need to leave their schools due to serious threats to their personal safety and sponsor their transfer to one of a list of registered ‘safe schools’. Anyway, they’re supplementing my school fees and Dad and Carole are paying the rest.”

Blaine is momentarily stumped. “The Daniel Yates Initiative, huh,” he says softly. “Is everything sorted then?”

“I guess,” and again, Kurt shrugs. “I’ve been kind of swamped with all of this recently. I had to fill out a bunch of forms for the Daniel Yates Initiative, and then Dalton wanted me to sit a bunch of entrance exams, and then McKinley started to dig their heals in about my transcripts… I start at Dalton next week.”

Blaine gives Kurt a small smile. “I’m sorry you had to leave your old school,” he says, and he means it. “I know you had a lot of friends there.”

“It’s okay,” Kurt says.

It’s not really, though, is it?

\--

Blaine gives Kurt the down and dirty about Dalton, all the things he wishes he had known in his first week. He explains the dress code, and that it’s upheld so seriously because it’s about pride, and he skims over a couple of Dalton traditions, like the annual swim meet against the local all-girls school.

After a while, Kurt drags Blaine downstairs to do some baking together, which inevitably ends up with the both of them covered in flour and only about half of the cake batter making it into the oven.

“This is disgusting,” Blaine says, cording his hands through his hair, which is at present a mix of gel and flour that’s quickly solidifying.

Kurt wrinkles his nose at it. “No arguments here,” he agrees. “Maybe you should go take a shower.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says. “That actually sounds pretty great.”

Kurt directs him to the bathroom upstairs and hands over a clean towel and some sweats for him to change into. Once inside the neatly tiled room, Blaine amuses himself by trying to figure out how to turn Kurt’s shower on. He’s on the verge of seeking out his phone and taking a picture of it to send to his dad for help when he manages to finally lift the correct lever and a heavy spray of water falls on him.

Kurt has a veritable armada of shampoos and conditioners in his shower, so Blaine picks the cheapest looking ones to use on his hair and quickly sets about dismantling the mess in his hair.

When he’s done, he opens the bathroom door and pads downstairs, to where Kurt is putting the last of the apparatus away in the kitchen. “Hey,” Kurt says. “Looking better. A bit less like a ghost.”

“I always look good, Kurt,” Blaine says with a grin, channelling Tony heavily.

And Kurt _blushes_. Like, actually flat-out _blushes._ Oh fuck.

Thankfully, that’s when Blaine’s phone chooses to ring, obnoxious ringtone and all, and Kurt startles, then turns to where it’s sitting on the worktop. “Huh,” Kurt says, picking it up and handing it over. “Your aunt’s calling you.”

“She’s not my aunt,” Blaine replies immediately, taking the phone and rolling his eyes once more at the caller ID. _INCOMING CALL: AUNT PEP._ At Kurt’s questioning look, Blaine shrugs. “My dad’s idea of a joke,” he explains. “I should probably take this.”

Kurt nods and makes a ‘go ahead’ gesture, turning back to the pile of apparatus he still has to put back away.

Blaine answers the phone, moving away from the kitchen. “Hey, Pepper, what’s up?”

“ _Not much_ ,” comes Pepper’s calm voice down the line. “ _Just calling to let you know that Tony won’t be able to make his scheduled call tonight. We’re doing the press circuit about the whole CEO business._ ”

“Sounds fun,” Blaine comments without a shred of sincerity.

“ _For a given value of fun, sure,”_ Pepper agrees. “ _Tony is adept at handling the press, but only when he wants to be. And when he’s not sleeping with them._ ”

“Should I avoid the news sites for a couple of days?” Blaine asks, thinking of the _I am Iron Man_ explosion six months back.

“ _I’ll let you know if it gets that bad._ ” On the other end of the line, Blaine hears someone calling Pepper’s name. “ _Look, I’ve got to go now, but you be good, okay?_ ”

“I’m always good.”

“ _Strange, I’m pretty sure that’s what your father used to say to me._ ” Blaine can hear the smile in her voice. “ _Stay safe, Blaine._ ”

“You too, Pepper,” Blaine says. He hears the dial tone, and stares at his phone.

All too soon, though, his mind flashes back to Kurt, and the way he had blushed, and…

Well, just, fuck.

\--

“Tony’s missed two scheduled calls,” Blaine tells Fi, fiddling nervously with the ends of his blazer sleeves. “I mean, sure, he’s terrible at scheduling, but he usually just calls a day later and apologises and it’s fine, but there’s been _nothing_ , no calls, no texts and I…”

“You’re worried,” Fi surmises calmly.

“Yes, I’m worried,” Blaine says, sharper than he intended. “He hasn’t gone this long without calling since…” He trails off again, not sure he particular wants to say the words out loud.

“Since his abduction in Afghanistan,” Fi completes for him. She says the words gently, but it does nothing to soften the way they slam into Blaine’s gut.

“It’s his birthday tomorrow,” Blaine says quietly. “Thirty-five. I can’t miss school to fly out to see him, but… I just want to see my dad.”

“But that’s not all that’s bothering you,” Fi notes, and Blaine has never decided if he likes or hates the way that Fi has been able to read him so well.

Blaine shakes his head. “I think Kurt has a crush on me.”

Okay, Blaine doesn’t just _think_ this, he’s pretty damn sure of it. In fact, he’d be willing to stake money on it.

“This bothers you.”

“I can’t deal with a relationship right now,” Blaine explains. “I really can’t. There’s all the shi—stuff about Tony, and all the stuff I’m still trying to get through with Daniel, and on top of that, Kurt is not in a position to be making informed romantic decisions. He’s great – he’s really great – but I don’t…”

“You don’t like him like that,” Fi says. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Ignore it?” Blaine offers, wincing because he knows how bad it sounds. “Try not to lead him on, but not cut him out either? I don’t know. I don’t have much experience at all. I guess I could ask Tony, but…”

“But?”

“I still haven’t told him I’m gay.” Fi raises her eyebrows, and Blaine can feel himself getting defensive. “It hasn’t come up! And I’m pretty sure he knows, because he knew enough about the attack at the dance to set up a freaking charitable organisation, so I just didn’t think it was an issue!”

“Clearly it is an issue if it is preventing you from going to your dad for advice,” Fi points out.

Blaine opens his mouth, but the words fall away from his lips. “Yeah,” he eventually says. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

\--

Dalton is having a home-study day – probably Blaine’s favourite thing about private school if he’s honest – so he’s spent the day so far bumming around the house while his mom’s at work. He got up this morning determined to study, but he got as far as opening his books before he was closing them and turning on his laptop to trawl through xkcd’s _What If?_ website.

He’s halfway through a problem about leap seconds when he hears the doorbell ring. Blaine heaves himself up off the couch and shuts his laptop lid, then drags his feet over to the front door. He pulls it open, a polite, “Hello,” on his lips, and stops dead.

“Dad?”

Tony is standing there, shoeless on Blaine’s doorstep, Iron Man armour collapsed into a suitcase beside him, looking utterly drained. “Hey, kiddo,” Tony says.

“You look like shit.” The words are out of Blaine’s mouth before he can stop them, a combination of frustration and surprise fuelling them.

Tony looks down at himself. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I guess I do.”

And that’s that.

\--

Blaine drives them across Westerville to a coffee shop he knows will be abandoned at this time of day. When they get there, Tony shuffles up to the bewildered barista and says, “Three hundred bucks if you don’t post my location online.” The barista blinks, widens her eyes, and then nods.

They settle in at a corner table, Tony practically draped over his seat as Blaine scrutinises him. “So,” Blaine eventually says. “Palladium poisoning.”

Tony jolts, his head snapping up. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “You know,” is what he eventually settles on.

Blaine shrugs, trying to go for disaffected. “’OsCorp’s NuGro technique is the life’s work of Dr Yasmin Yates,’” he quotes, “’who started the project after the death of her father at the hands of long-term palladium poisoning. At further stages of development, NuGro is expected to be able to reverse the effects of up to stage three of palladium poisoning, a condition that is identified by the appearance of dark black lines in a criss-cross pattern across the patient’s skin.’” Blaine indicates Tony’s neck. “Black lines in a criss-cross pattern,” he says.

Tony’s right hand ghosts up against his neck, before falling back down to his side. “Right,” he says emptily. “Genius, got it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Blaine asks, and he hates how faint his voice sounds.

“Aw, kiddo, it wasn’t because of you,” Tony says, tone uncharacteristically gentle. “It was because of…” He trails off and shakes his head. “It wasn’t because of you.”

“That’s why you gave me the watch, right,” Blaine realises. “Because you were dying.”

Tony is silent. Blaine sort of wants to punch him, but he won’t. So much of the past few weeks suddenly makes sense to Blaine, and it turns his stomach.

“Does Pepper know?” Blaine eventually asks.

Tony looks up. “No.”

It makes him a terrible person, doesn’t it, that that makes him feel slightly better. Blaine turns his gaze down to his coffee. “You’re an idiot,” he tells Tony. “But I love you in spite of that.”

“Yeah, kiddo.”

They fall into an uncomfortable silence. Blaine is the one who breaks it. “So, there’s this guy,” is how he starts. “His name’s Kurt.”

Tony looks up again then, meeting Blaine’s gaze. “Okay,” he says.

Blaine lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I think he has a crush on me and hell if I know what to do about it.”

“Wait,” Tony says, holding up a hand in the universal sign for ‘pause’. “Are you asking me for advice on how _not_ to sleep with someone? I can’t help but feel you’ve come to the wrong person.”

“Oh my God,” Blaine says. “My father’s a slut. Of course. How could I forget?”

“Hey now, I disapprove of that word,” Tony chastises. “Let’s not demonise people for enjoying sex, okay?”

The grin breaks through Blaine’s expression unexpectedly, and for a second, it eclipses everything that they have to face. Blaine forgets about palladium, and he forgets about Kurt, and it’s just him and Tony, his bio-dad from out of town. It’s normal.

The truth is, though, that his bio-dad is Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, media star, and everyone wants a piece of him. And apparently, that everyone includes leaders of secret intelligence agencies.

\--

Blaine doesn’t like Nick Fury. There, he said it.

He is, however, absolutely bone-chillingly terrified of the man, and has been forced to sign nearly six separate NDAs to ensure that he won’t disclose the fact that he met him very briefly at the coffee shop before being carted out of his seat by ‘Agent Romanoff’.

It’s only when Blaine gets home that he realises where he recognises Agent Romanoff’s voice from. She’s Natalie Rushman.

Which means that Nick Fury, leader of super-secret intelligence organisation and super-spy-extraordinaire, knows about the Tony Stark issue. Fuck.

\--

He is out at the Lima Bean with Kurt when he gets the text.

**_MOM:_ ** _Stark Expo under attack. Turn on the news._

He spends the next forty minutes burning through his data allowance on his phone, holding the small device in a death grip and trying not to cry at the smudged words _STARK PHONE V1.0_.

\--

Tony survives. Blaine cries then, and Kurt is beside him, uncertain and confused.

Huh, Blaine thinks as Kurt wraps his arms around him. This is nice.

\--

Pepper calls him in the aftermath of the attack, a rushed call in midst of chaos. “ _Right, in order_ ,” she says, efficient and so very Pepper-like. “ _Your father is fine; the palladium poisoning is gone. He gave me an explanation of how it worked, but I couldn’t make any sense of it._ ”

Blaine drops to the ground, relief ballooning up inside him. Tony is fine. He’s not dying. Okay.

“ _Secondly, Tony and I are dating_ —”

“Finally,” Blaine mutters.

“ _Thirdly, I am giving myself a raise, because Gods above, this was not in my contract,_ ” and Blaine has to laugh there. None of this was in any of their contracts. “ _Lastly, do you still want to come to Malibu for Christmas, or as Tony pissed you off too much?_ ”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

And it’s the truth.

\--

It’s not easy being Tony Stark’s son. Blaine think he must have known this going into the relationship, but he couldn’t have possibly guessed the extent of his difficulties. Tony is forgetful, at times insufferable, and entirely brilliant at scaring the shit out of his loved ones.

At the same time, though, Tony is Blaine’s dad.

“Stop laughing, Dad, okay?”

“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s just—” and then Tony breaks off again. “You pretended that you had a gig so that you could sing with Kurt? Kurt, who just weeks ago, you were pretty certain had a crush on you? That Kurt?”

Well, when he says it like that, it sounds pretty dumb. “Shut up, Dad.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony apologises without really meaning it. “Kiddo, I love you, but sometimes you can be an idiot.”

“Right back at’cha, Mr Let’s Not Tell My Son I Have Palladium Poisoning.”

“Oh I see how it’s going to be now – every time you need to win an argument, you whip out the palladium poisoning.”

Tony Stark is Blaine’s dad.

And yeah, he’s an idiot, but Blaine loves him in spite of it.

\--

“Dad,” Blaine says hesitantly, “why is there a particle accelerator in the middle of your workshop?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT ON LOOKS LIKE CARELESSNESS: "When Blaine thought about being outed, he always thought it would be for his sexuality. In retrospect, he should have guessed that his parentage would prove far more interesting."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Blaine thought about being outed, he had always assumed it would be for his sexuality. He kind of wants to laugh at that idea now, because he really should have guessed that his parentage would prove far more interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this is the last one. It's been a wild ride, guys. Thank you for sharing it with me!
> 
> Before we go on: the fic title is from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde. It comes from this quotation: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

**PART IV**

At the start of January, Blaine misses a week of school. The official story, the one his mom feeds to Dalton, is that he fell unexpectedly ill on his last days in Malibu and couldn’t fly back in time for the start of lessons. The unofficial story is that it’s Pepper’s birthday and Blaine can afford to miss a bit of school. The truth is that it’s the anniversary of Tony’s abduction in Afghanistan.

They don’t really acknowledge the day, as such. There are no gratuitous displays of emotion; no one sobs into anyone’s shoulder. It’s just another day.

Except it’s not.

Pepper turns off her phone and Tony shuts down his StarkPad. They eat ice-cream for breakfast and cereal for dessert, and sit too close to each other as they watch reruns of _Sing!_ on the large flatscreen in the lounge. Tony bitches about the plot and Pepper rolls her eyes at the songs; Blaine privately thinks they’re both ridiculous.

Dinner is cooked by Pepper and as such is a startling combination of so simple it would be impossible to mess up and inedible. Over the food, which Tony seems to move around his plate more than eat, Blaine talks a bit about the project he’s working on in his spare time – nanofluids as a cooling mechanism for CPUs – and Tony nods or frowns, depending on whether or not he’s got the right idea.

It’s laid back and easy, which is what is so strange.

Blaine flies back to Ohio the next day and he can’t decide if he feels relaxed or on edge. When he lands, he gets a text from Tony reading, _Fuck, that was weird. Let’s never do that again, okay?_

Blaine grins. _Deal._

\--

“Hey,” Blaine says, knocking on the door of Ms Bewes’ office. “So, you wanted to see me?”

“Uh, yes, yes, I did,” Ms Bewes says, spinning around in her chair and almost falling out of it as she does so.

Ms Bewes is probably Blaine’s all-time favourite teacher. She’s the polar opposite of smooth, but she makes up for it with infectious enthusiasm and boundless excitement. For the past few months, Ms Bewes has been responsible for supervising Blaine’s independent study in physics and math, which is basically a really fancy way of saying that she’s been making sure he isn’t spending his study periods playing computer games.

Her office is an eclectic mix of almost-funny science jokes – taped to her office door is a red poster that reads, ‘If this poster is blue, stop running in the corridors.’ – and pictures of her children in varying stages of growing up.

“So, take a seat,” Ms Bewes invites, gesturing to the empty seat across from hers.

Blaine sits. “I have to admit, I’m pretty nervous about this,” he says. “I’m not in trouble, right?”

“Oh, Lord no,” Ms Bewes denies immediately. “This is about your project – the engineering one?”

Blaine frowns lightly before it hits him. “Oh, you mean the CPU cooling thing?” he asks. She nods. Blaine shakes his head. “It’s—I’m just messing around. I’m sorry if I’m taking up resources, or…”

But Ms Bewes is shaking her head. “Blaine,” she says, and yes, that is a smile on her face. “Have you ever heard of the International Young Engineers Awards?”

The name is familiar; it’s probably something that Tony mentioned about his childhood, but Blaine can’t put his finger on when exactly this was. “I’m guessing it’s an international competition for young engineers,” he says wryly.

“Pretty much,” Ms Bewes affirms. “I want to enter you for it.”

Blaine’s mouth drops open.

Ms Bewes smiles, then reaches across and closes it for him.

\--

Blaine wasn’t lying when he told Ms Bewes that he was just messing around. It was a bit of curiosity when it started, a sort of, ‘Well, this could be a problem – how are we going to deal with it?’ His research is phenomenally rough, and the work he has on a cost-effective CPU cooling method is decidedly half-hearted. He’s mostly been experimenting with different nanofluids, trying to find one which does what he wants it to and won’t cost him all of his allowance. It’s all very promising, but he has _so much_ work left to do.

The first set of qualifying rounds are in March, which just leaves Blaine with three months to pull together his fragmented ideas into a serious project. He needs more time, and out of all his extra-curriculars, there’s only one that he can feasibly cut down on.

The Warblers.

There are only a few people alive of whom Blaine is scared. Wes Montgomery is unfortunately one of them.

“You can’t be serious,” Wes says. “Blaine, please tell me you’re not serious.”

Blaine raises his arms helplessly. “I’m sorry, Wes,” he says, trying to keep his gaze anywhere but on the vein in Wes’s forehead that looks dangerously close to popping. “It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

Wes places two fingers to his temple, looking upwards. “God give me strength,” he mutters, before fixing the full weight of his gaze on Blaine. “You are our lead soloist,” he explains through gritted teeth. “Do you have any idea—” He breaks off in a tortured exhale. “We’ve built our _entire set list_ around your vocal range, Blaine. You can’t just— _abandon_ us.”

“Wes,” Blaine says, tone imploring. “This is huge. Not just in terms of the prestige – and it’s ludicrously prestigious – but in terms of the amount of work I’m going to have to do. I want this, Wes. I really, _really_ want this.”

Blaine can see Wes’s resolve weakening. “This is a big deal, huh?” he asks.

“A freaking massive deal,” Blaine confirms.

Wes presses his lips together. “Okay,” he relents.

A grin breaks out on Blaine’s face.

“Okay,” Wes repeats, “ _but_ ,” he holds up a finger, “you’re still on backup vocals, _and_ you have to come to at least one rehearsal each week.” He frowns. “And quit grinning. You’re freaking me out.”

It’s a better deal than Blaine was hoping for and he would be a fool to turn it down. “Wes,” he says. “Thank you.”

Wes shrugs. “Make it up for me when you win that science prize.”

\--

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _Any chance I can borrow some HPC equipment for a few days?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _No hacking until you’re eighteen. These are the rules._

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _… I really do worry about your teenage years sometimes, Dad.  
 **BLAINE:** And it’s for testing the nanofluids. You know, my project?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _Oh, that thing. I’ll check SI’s schedule for the supercomputers at our New York labs. I think there’s some time in a couple of weekends. If not, I can always ask OsCorp for a favour._

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _It pained you greatly to say that, didn’t it?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _You have no idea._

\--

The next two months are hectic beyond all comprehension. Blaine’s days are scheduled within an inch of their lives, and he finally understands why his father was so useless without Pepper. He executes activities in perfectly structured blocks of time, and he can feel himself growing more and more tense as he nears the completion of the project.

It’s in March, an hour after he’s met deadline, and two days before he has to present his project to the Ohio state judges, that he finds himself wandering down the main staircase at Dalton, suddenly at a loss as to what to do.

That’s when he hears singing.

Blaine frowns lightly. It’s Kurt’s voice – he’d recognise it anywhere – but that doesn’t make any sense. Eating lunch with Kurt each day has been a welcome respite from solid work, and he’s heard enough about Kurt’s frustrations with the Warblers’ solo policy to know that he’s not getting any opportunities to sing like this…

It’s kind of beautiful.

Blaine makes his way down towards the Warblers’ rehearsal room, and stops in the doorway, just watching.

It’s then that it hits him.

\--

Blaine Anderson fully recognises that he’s a disastrous combination of intelligent and utterly dense.

Wes saw this coming. David saw this coming. Tony and Pepper have been taking _bets_ on this. Mom definitely knew months ago.

Blaine didn’t.

He’s in love with Kurt.

In hindsight, it’s so freaking obvious he kind of wants to bang his head against the table. It’s been going on for so long that he can’t track the development back to a point of origin, and that’s almost scary. This is the time when he looks back on that first meeting with Kurt, staggered on the staircase, he sees the romance in it. Kurt Hummel knocked his world off its axis and when it finally re-aligned, nothing was the same.

Blaine has always looked at his father and wondered how all that charisma missed him, wondered how he got stuck with ineloquence when Tony can look at words and sentences and make them _dance_ for him. Now, though, he opens his mouth, and the words spiral and twirl, and he thinks he gets it.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, “there is a moment when you say to yourself, ‘Oh there you are. I’ve been looking for you forever.’”

Blaine treasures the moment as it happens, savours every second as he leans forward – _please don’t be wrong about this, please don’t be wrong about this_ – and presses their lips together. A barest hint of contact is all it takes before Kurt’s hand is cupping Blaine’s cheek and they’re both exhaling into the kiss.

Blaine’s father may be the one living a superhero movie, but, Blaine thinks, he’s the one living the romantic epic.

“We should practice,” Blaine says, grinning stupidly.

Kurt’s returning smile is breathless and impish. “I thought we were.”

Well, there’s only one reaction to that, isn’t there?

They kiss again.

\--

Blaine can’t stop smiling after he makes it through the regional qualifiers to the national round.

The Warblers lose, but for some reason, Kurt can’t stop smiling either.

\--

After a month of dating, Blaine forces himself to face the fact that it’s probably time to tell Kurt about the Tony Stark issue.

He spends a week fretting over the decision, and practically talks Fi’s ear off as he tries to figure out the correct way to go about it, before it gets to their date and Blaine still doesn’t have a plan. Hitting the problem with math doesn’t help, either, and Blaine gets as far as trying to write up a mathematical model before he realises he’s being ridiculous.

There has to be an easy way to do this, he thinks, but for the life of him, he just can’t identify what it is.

“Jesus, Blaine,” Kurt says, cutting into his internal monologue. “You look like you’re about to tell me you have cancer or something.”

Blaine can almost picture Tony sat there with them, snorting and saying, “Wouldn’t be the worst thing someone’s called me.”

But Tony’s not here. It’s Blaine and Kurt, Kurt and Blaine, and this is something Blaine has to do alone.

“I have two dads,” Blaine says eventually. “Well, I guess, I only have one at the moment, but there have been two people in my life that I have called ‘Dad’.”

Kurt regards Blaine, and Blaine is so, so thankful for the fact that his boyfriend doesn’t interrupt him.

“The guy who raised me, for a given value of raised, that’s Carl.” Blaine shrugs. “When I was fourteen, my mom told him that I wasn’t his biological child. A month later, I came out as gay and he asked for a divorce. I haven’t seen him since…” (Since I was fourteen and my ribs ached and I hid my bruises with scarves and hats, and he swung at me with car parts and _laughed_.) “It’s been a while.”

Blaine shrugs. “Then there’s Tony, my bio-dad from out of town.” He smiles here, unable to quash his default reaction to that sentence. “I met him the November before last and I… He’s kind of everything I’d ever wanted from him. I mean, he’s infuriating and worrying, but when the chips come down, he’s by my side when I need him.”

Blaine feels his hand ghost over the pocket of his jeans where his pocket watch is hooked, but he pretends that the gesture never happened. “I don’t really talk about him much because it’s none of anyone’s business, but also because… Well, he’s Tony Stark.”

Kurt is quiet for a long time after that, and Blaine almost begins to panic. Then Kurt reaches across and lays his hand on top of Blaine’s. “I don’t care,” he says.

“You … don’t care?”

“Blaine, I’m dating you, not your father,” Kurt explains softly. “And I’m pretty darn fond of you; it’s going to take a lot more than a complicated family situation to scare me off.”

“Oh,” Blaine lets out the sound in a puff of breath. “I’m pretty darn fond of you too.”

Kurt smiles, wide and open. “Good,” he says. “You can talk to me if you want,” he offers suddenly, “about who your father is. I guess it must be tough.”

“I do okay,” Blaine says, and for the most part, it’s the truth. “I have my therapist and my mom, and Pepper—”

“Wait, an unholy goddamn second,” Kurt cuts in sharply. “Pepper – as in your ‘Aunt Pep’ – she’s Pepper Potts, right?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Kurt makes an aborted half-squawk.

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, not sounding entirely there. “I mean, I’m just trying to contain my inner-fanboy, but, sure.”

“I tell you my father is Tony Stark and your reaction is, ‘I don’t care,’ but as soon as we get to Pepper, you freak out?” Blaine asks incredulously. Don’t get him wrong; Pepper is awesome, but he can’t exactly see what about her is making Kurt have to visibly suppress the urge to jump around the room.

“Pepper Potts is a _legend_ , Blaine,” Kurt tells him seriously. “She took a _sledgehammer_ to the glass-ceiling, verbally bitch-slapped that misogynistic TV show host live on air, and don’t even get me started on her fashion sense. I can’t decide if I want to dress her or let her dress me.”

“She is pretty badass,” Blaine agrees.

Kurt zeroes in on him. “Tell me _everything_.”

\--

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _GUESS WHICH GUY IS GOING TO ENGLAND FOR THE INTERNATIONAL YOUNG ENGINEERS AWARDS_

**_DAD:_ ** _You?_ **  
_DAD:_ ** _Wait, is that a trick question?_   
_**DAD:** Animal, vegetable, or mineral?_

**_BLAINE:_ ** _On one hand, I want to be pissed at you for being an ass, but on the other, I just got to shake Reed Richards’ hand and nothing can bring me down right now~~~_

**_DAD:_ ** _Reed Richards is an asshat._   
_**DAD:** Sorry. I’m not trying to shit on your happiness. I’m proud of you, kiddo. So fucking proud._   
_**DAD:** Pepper says congratulations, as does Maria Glynn._

**_BLAINE:_ ** _Who’s Maria Glynn?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _The investor Pepper and I are meeting with.  
 **DAD:** And now Pepper’s glaring at me and telling me to put away my phone because ‘it’s poor manners, Tony, God.’_

 **_BLAINE:_ ** _You’re texting me in an investor’s meeting? Wait, why am I surprised?_

 **_DAD:_ ** _Beats me._

\--

This is how Blaine says it: in a coffee shop, bathed in low-lying sunlight, Kurt halfway through a sip of his latte. The words burst from his lips like a desperate exhale.

“I love you.”

Kurt startles, forces a swallow, then smiles. “Love you too.”

\--

June sneaks up on Blaine unexpectedly, and he almost forgets to be nervous about the competition. Of course, then he remembers about the competition, freaks out, and has to have his self-esteem talked back into him by Tony, Pepper, and his mother.

He’s mostly calm by the time they arrive at the airport for check-in.

Blaine turns sixteen during the flight over, celebrating his birthday somewhere in the expanse between Port Columbus and London Heathrow. His mother is snoring softly beside him as he counts down the seconds to midnight on his pocket watch.

On the surface, sixteen doesn’t feel much different to fifteen. In his mind, though, Blaine can’t help but count back two years, back to when he was fourteen and his parents spent the night screaming at each other. He sits up a little straighter in his seat, and leans his head against the aeroplane window.

He has changed. He thinks he likes it.

Blaine gets off the plane to a text from Tony and a picture of him and Pepper holding a heavily bedazzled sign reading, _HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLAINE!_ Blaine snaps a quick selfie of him at the airport and taps out a message – _Who let you near glitter again?_ – before sending it off and going to grab his bags.

He’s a bit disappointed, if he’s honest, about the timing of this trip. He wouldn’t miss it for the world – some things only come once in a lifetime, and Blaine is willing to be that representing America in an international engineering competition is one of them – but it falls directly over his birthday and the grand unveiling of Stark Tower’s clean energy generator in New York. And the latter is kind of all Tony’s been able to talk about since February.

(That, and the fact that Blaine should really upgrade his banged up StarkPhone to the new model, because ‘seriously, the latest Samsung could probably outmatch it; it’s _embarrassing_ , Blaine.’ Blaine keeps refusing, though, because he only needs to get as far as trying to take the back of the phone off before his eyes fall on the smudged _STARKPHONE V1.0_ and he can’t bear to let go of it.)

London is an endless rhythm of activity after activity, broken up by short meals and sleep. He presents his design at different rounds, chats up his fellow competitors, stutters through the fact that he has a boyfriend to some of the more persistent admirers he gains, and fills what little free time he has dragging Mom around the sights. He buys Tony a souvenir T-shirt from a street vendor. It has a picture of Joseph Bazalgette on it and is printed with the words _NOT PREPARED TO PUT UP WITH YOUR SHIT. _Tony will find it hilarious.

Mom, for her part, spends her days at museums and shops, soaking up culture and regurgitating it all back for Blaine each evening. It’s nice to see Mom like this again, full of life and enthusiasm, and Blaine almost dreads going back home.

And then Tony flies a nuclear warhead into a portal and Blaine…

Blaine misses the call.

Out of all of the things he witnesses on that day, the news reports that send him into panic attack after panic attack, it’s the call that rips him apart.

It happens during the award ceremony, where he’s supposed to be graciously accepting third place, when Dominique, the competitor from France, lets out a heavily accented, “Oh my God!” as she stares down at her phone, then flips it around so that Blaine can see.

New York is being invaded. By aliens. It’s an alien invasion. In New York. Where Tony is.

That’s when he has the first panic attack.

He’s dimly aware of the things happening around him as it happens, of the crowd of teenagers forming around them as they try to figure out what to do, of his mother pushing through them and crouching beside him, of someone counting his breaths for him, but his mind is stuck on a constant replay of _TonyTonyTonyDeadDeadTonyTonyDAD_.

He has to forcefully pull himself from the panic attack, shut down his thought processes and reboot them, and it’s painful. He gets through it, and collapses into his mother’s embrace, shaking hands and, “I need to call Tony – need to call Tony, Mom.”

She shakes her head, though, and Blaine makes Dominique hand over her phone and…

That’s Iron Man.

His phone is set to vibrate for the awards ceremony.

He doesn’t hear it ringing.

So, this is how it goes: he watches Iron Man – Tony Stark, Tony, _Dad_ – fly a nuclear warhead into an alien porthole, and then plummet back out of it, and when it’s over, and everyone is cheering—

_MISSED CALL: DAD (1)_

He doesn’t have a panic attack this time. He just clutches his phone to his chest, vision blurring over _STARKPHONE V1.0_ , and he _sobs._

He misses a call from Fi. He misses a call from Kurt. He misses a call from Cooper.

He doesn’t care.

He dries his eyes, packs his suitcase, and books an early flight back to Ohio. Tony meets him there, bruised, battered, and flanked by Pepper and a man Blaine doesn’t recognise, and Blaine _runs_ at him. He crushes Tony into a brutal hug, and Tony just winces and says, “Yeah, I know, kiddo. I know.”

(Tony laughs at the Joseph Bazalgette T-shirt. It feels like a release.)

\--

Blaine quits the Warblers.

After he’s hit send on his resignation to David, he almost can’t believe it. He has to keep checking his sent items, to make sure that he has actually followed through with it after all.

Despite what his mom seems to think, though, this isn’t about Tony Stark. God, this is probably the first thing in a long time that _isn’t_ about Tony Stark.

No, this is about _Fi._

Fi has been on Blaine’s back since he pulled what could potentially be regarded as the equivalent of a three month long all-nighter – but would more accurately be described as a concentrated lower-level PhD – about dropping something from his load of extra-curriculars so that he would have more downtime. Well, she used words with more syllables and a whole lot of jargon – sometimes Blaine thinks she does it to remind him that she’s just as smart as he is – but the gist of it is there.

Blaine kept ducking out of it, because… Well, because he didn’t want to have to deal with it.

In their last session together, however, Fi reached the end of her metaphorical rope. She sat him down, handed him a walnut cookie, then pushed a pad of paper and a pen towards him. “List of commitments, go,” she commanded, and Blaine was far too smart to do anything other than obey.

Once he was done, Fi helped him take the list apart, pick out the ones he couldn’t drop, and then drop the ones he could.

Future Business Leaders of America was kind of a must – résumé packaging for the Ivies, or so he’s been told – and cutting out on the Dalton Robotics and Engineering Club would be the very definition of a dick move, given that he’s, you know, their president and all. Then there was boxing and … No. Blaine knew what his coping mechanisms were and he would be a _mess_ without being able to take his feelings out on a bag of sawdust at least once a week.

He chiselled down at the list bullet point by bullet point, until the truth was staring him in the face.

The Warblers.

He had to quit the Warblers.

And he has, and fuck if that doesn’t feel like far more of a decision than it should.

For a long time at Dalton, there’s been this constant tug-of-war. Music. Science. Music. Science. He’s heard it all: what a waste it would be for him to squander his intellect on a career in the arts, and what a waste it would be for him to squander his talent on a career in the sciences. He _owes it to himself_ to do this. To do that. Sing this. Science that.

Fuck _that_ , Blaine suddenly decides, slamming down on the mouse button and closing his e-mail. This isn’t him saying goodbye to singing and performing; this is him saying goodbye to show choir. There’s a difference.

There’s a difference, right?

\--

The look Kurt gives Blaine when he explains that he’s quit show choir is decidedly pinched.

“What?” Blaine asks, taking a long sip of his coffee. “Your face is doing that ‘should I say something or should I not?’ thing again. Just spit it out.”

“Are you sure you’re not doing this to please your father?” Kurt asks eventually, voice carefully soft.

Blaine shakes his head. “That’s kind of ridiculous, Kurt,” he says. “Tony doesn’t care what I do as long as I’m happy.”

Kurt sighs. “I guess I’m just disappointed that I’m not going to be able to see your face when the New Directions smash the Warblers at Regionals this year.”

Blaine lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I’ll still be there,” he says. “I just won’t be cheering on the kids in blazers.”

Kurt gives him a private smile.

\--

In September, Blaine wakes up to a three am call from Pepper.

“ _Blaine_ ,” she says. “ _I am so sorry_.”

Everything stutters to a stop.

“ _Blaine, are you there?_ ”

“Is he dead?” Blaine asks, and it’s nearly too much.

But then Pepper replies, voice light and easy, “ _Who—Tony? Tony’s fine, Blaine. Well, not fine, but he’s unharmed. I just—there’s been a situation._ ”

Blaine hears Pepper take a deep breath on the other end of the line, like she’s steeling herself for something. “ _I am calling to inform you that in about two hours’ time, the news that you are Tony Stark’s son is going to break._ ”

And, oh.

Oh God.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

When Blaine thought about being outed, he had always assumed it would be for his sexuality. He kind of wants to laugh at that idea now, because he really should have guessed that his parentage would prove far more interesting.

It’s so deliciously ironic as well, because when Blaine prepared himself to deal with being Tony Stark’s illegitimate child, it never even crossed his mind to think about this.

“How?” the words rips out of his throat, and he’s not sure what the emotions layering within it are, but he knows they’re not positive.

“ _It’s a long story_ ,” Pepper sighs, but Blaine knows she’ll explain. “ _I can’t actually tell you most of it because it’s classified, but the long and short of it is that there was a … hostile blackmailing Tony with the prospect of leaking your identity and existence to the press. It came to the point where the only way to come out on top, so to speak, was to devalue his information._ ”

“So Dad gave the story to the press,” Blaine surmises.

“ _Yes._ ” Pepper pauses. “ _Blaine, I know that you’re probably feeling very conflicted about all of this right now, but I’m going to have to ask you to pack a bag._ ”

“Dad is really the last person I want to see right now, Pepper,” Blaine says, shaking his head.

“ _That may be the case, but the fact of the matter is that you’re going to want to be as far away from Ohio as possible when the story hits the headlines,_ ” Pepper replies. She sounds tired, Blaine realises, and he wonders how long this blackmail business has been drawn out on their end. “ _SHIE—the government agency your father works with are sending a team in to escort you and your mother to one of Tony’s lesser known properties in Massachusetts – a remnant of his MIT days, or so I’m told. Tony will meet you out there in a couple of days and I’ll stay behind to manage the press._ ”

Blaine pulls himself out of bed. “You know I was going to get one hundred per cent attendance this year?” he asks rhetorically. “I just need clothes and my textbooks right? We can get the rest of it there?”

Pepper stifles a yawn. “ _Yeah._ ”

“Brilliant.”

\--

The house in Massachusetts, or Cambridge, more precisely, is tucked away and quiet. Blaine and his mom are dropped off there in the early hours of the morning by a team of five agents and the first thing Mom does is go back to bed.

Blaine can’t sleep.

So he stays up, eyes forced open, and he watches the story burst out onto the internet. He sees the photos – his school headshot, taken from the Dalton Academy website, and the official photo of him from the IYEA, holding his trophy with a wobbly smile on his face, and the last, his Facebook profile picture – and he sees the headlines.

 _THE FUTURE FACE OF STARK INDUSTRIES?_ asks ABC.

 _TONY STARK REVEALS HEIR_ , declares USA Today.

People goes with, _TONY’S SECRET LOVE CHILD._

And slowly, as day breaks, Blaine’s phone inbox begins to fill up.

The first is Jeff, who is the very definition of a morning person and regularly gets up at six just for the hell of it. He sends a wry, _I see what you mean, it’s complicated_ , and Blaine is so relieved at the casual acceptance he could cry.

Next is Nick, who chips in with, _Dude, why are you on CNN,_ then five minutes later: _Holy shit._

David sends a simple, _I fucking KNEW that you didn’t have an aunt at SI._

Wes gives him a concise, _Need anything, feel free to call_.

Those are the best ones. For each of those, there are a thousand that read, _Hey Blaine, it’s been a while, saw you on the news and thought I’d ask what’s been going on with you_. Blaine deletes those immediately, because he knows if he leaves them he’ll eventually reply with, _Fuck off_ , or something similar.

Kurt’s text message is the one that makes him laugh. _Well, it could be worse._

Blaine immediately taps out, _HOW? HOW COULD IT BE WORSE?_

_Us Weekly ran with Brangelina drama._

And then the laugh breaks free from Blaine’s throat and he’s grinning, and you know what? It doesn’t seem so bad at all.

\--

Tony looks exhausted when he finally arrives, dragging his feet up to the house’s front door. Blaine opens the door for him and gives him a loose hug.

“I’m so sorry, kiddo,” Tony says into Blaine’s hair.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Blaine says.

“It was the only way.”

Blaine believes him.

\--

Blaine returns to Dalton on a Wednesday and is instantly crushingly grateful for everything the school is.

Because no one stares.

He gets precursory glances in the halls, short looks across classrooms, but it seems to be mostly for recalibration purposes. He’s no longer _Blaine Anderson, probably going to be the next Tony Stark_ ; he’s _Blaine Anderson, will be the next Tony Stark._

No one calls him Mr Stark, no one asks invasive questions about what it’s like to be the love child of the United States’ most notorious playboy, and thank God and the heavens above, no one brings up Iron Man.

At Dalton, Blaine is just another future business leader of America.

And that’s not actually awful, Blaine realises.

\--

In October, Blaine has to have emergency eye surgery.

It’s… It’s bad.

\--

Blaine doesn’t like Sebastian Smythe.

Sebastian Smythe transferred into Dalton during Blaine’s leave of absence, and by the time Blaine arrives back, he had already wrapped the entire Warbler Council around his finger and secured himself a position as their lead soloist. At first, Blaine was heavily neutral towards the other boy.

And then he met him.

Blaine doesn’t like the way that Sebastian Smythe smirks at him, or the way Sebastian Smythe smooth-talks his way around Dalton, or the way that Sebastian calls him _Anderstark._

He doesn’t like Sebastian Smythe, but if he’s honest, he never thought him capable of this.

\--

Blaine remembers the event in stills.

He remembers the build-up to it – the Dalton-New Directions sing-off – and remembers Kurt grinning excitedly at him as he zipped up his leather jacket. “Remember,” Kurt had said. “You’re not cheering on the boys in blazers,” and then Kurt had tugged on the lapels of Blaine’s blazer and sunk them into a kiss.

He remembers the sing-off, remembers watching Kurt dance and sing. Kurt finished the number at the front, body twisted into a perfect end-pose.

And then there was a slushie in Sebastian Smythe’s hand.

And he remembers knowing that he couldn’t let it happen to Kurt.

And he remembers sprinting, running, diving.

And then he remembers pain.

Heroism, it seems, is hereditary.

\--

It’s his mom whose face he wakes up to and her eyes are red from tears. If Blaine were his father, he’d pick this feature out, needle and twist until he’d either pissed her off or made her laugh. But Blaine isn’t his father.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, but the words stick to the roof of his mouth. He frowns. “What drugs am I on?”

“The good ones, or so I’ve been told,” she tells him. “How are you feeling?”

Blaine considers the question for a moment. “Spacey,” he decides. “’S weird.”

Mom shakes her head at him, but there’s a small, relieved smile on her lips. “Don’t ever do that again.”

If Blaine were his father, he’d grin innocently. “Do what?” he’d say.

“I’ll try,” he slurs instead.

\--

Kurt enters the room looking like this is all somehow his fault. (It’s not and Blaine will swear it every day until Kurt believes it too.) He takes his seat next to Blaine’s bed, legs crossed delicately, and his eyes drift to the bandage around Blaine’s head.

“You’re such an idiot,” Kurt eventually gets out. “For some goddamn reason I love you anyway.”

“It’s the hair,” Blaine says seriously.

Kurt rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.

\--

The sounds of a commotion outside of his hospital room pull Blaine from his sleep.

“—Let me see _MY SON_ —”

“Sir—”

“—Damn harpy bitch—”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave—”

“ _Carl._ ”

And Blaine snaps his eyes fully open. Carl. Carl Anderson. What the hell is Carl doing in Ohio?

“—LET ME THROUGH!”

“ _Carl._ ” And that’s Mom. She sounds stressed, he dimly notes, and a bit scared.“This is not the place.”

“—My _son_ , Pamela.”

“Oh, Carl. He hasn’t been your son in a very long time.”

Blaine goes back to sleep.

\--

“I should have put money on the Tony Stark thing,” Dr Jones says, shaking her head. She’s stood at the end of Blaine’s bed, scanning over his medical chart.

In some ways, he thinks, he should hate all this, hate how it reminds him of that night, hate the fact that this is a person who has seen him at his utter lowest. But he doesn’t. Because this is the person who talked him out of his panic attack, who gave him some of the best advice he has ever gotten and who made him laugh when all he wanted to do was cry.

Dr Elizabeth Jones is an unlikely lodestone for Blaine.

“Probably,” Blaine agrees.

“My fiancée thought I was having a stroke when I saw the headlines,” she goes on. “She looked ready to dial 911 when I finally told her that I’d treated you before.” Dr Jones flips the chart shut and puts it back in its holder at the end of the bed. “I’m guessing you’ve had a busy two years.”

“Yeah.” Blaine shrugs. “But, on the bright side, this is the first time I’ve been in hospital since then, so it could be worse.”

“True,” Dr Jones concedes. “Still must have sucked at times.”

Blaine rolls over the statement in his mind.

“Not really,” and it may not be the entire truth, but it’s less of a lie than he thought it would be.

\--

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony says. “How’re you feeling?”

“Tired,” Blaine answers. He wiggles his toes beneath his blanket, watching the way that the material spikes and dips around them. God, is he really finding this interesting? What do they have him _on_?

“Yeah,” Tony agrees quietly. “Yeah, I can believe that.” He clears his throat, straightens a bit. “So, I hear you made a bid for my Avenger title.”

“It was stupid,” Blaine tells him.

Tony shakes his head. “It was brave,” he says. “Very, very, stupidly brave. Very … Gryffindor. Harry Potter would be proud.”

They fall into a comfortable quiet. Tony leans back in his chair, one hand on top of Blaine’s blankets.

“You know I’ll always come,” Tony says suddenly. “When you need me – I’ll always come.”

Blaine feels his eyebrows rise. “Even if the fate of the world is in your hands?”

“Meh, screw that.” Tony shrugs. “What are seven billion people when faced with you, kiddo?”

“Some would say the greater good,” Blaine answers wryly, but Tony is already shaking his head.

“Blaine, I’m no Captain America. I’ll pick you every time.”

That’s the thing about Tony Stark, though: he just doesn’t give a shit, apart from the times when he does. It must be terrifying to have that level of devotion directed towards you, Blaine thinks before his sluggish brain can catch up and tell him that he already does.

Tony Freaking Stark, Blaine thinks. Tony Freaking Stark.

“I love you, kiddo. Get some sleep.”

\--

Pepper sends him a Gryffindor scarf. Blaine laughs until he cries.

\--

A month later, Blaine goes back to school.

Sebastian Smythe doesn’t.

\--

_“Oh, Carl. He hasn’t been your son in a very long time.”_

Mom has always had a thing for the gentle, world-shattering truths.

\--

When Blaine is finally given the okay to remove his eyepatch by the hospital, he spends ten minutes looking at himself in his bathroom mirror. There’s a scar just under his jaw where he burnt himself with a soldering iron back in January, and a faint, pale pink line running along his hairline, from when the baseball bat hit and he fell onto a shard of glass.

He has his mother’s hair. His father’s eyes. A face for the magazines.

 _Anderstark,_ Sebastian had called him, and Blaine had hated the way that he’d made it sound like an insult.

 _Anderstark_ , and the word had burned.

 _Anderstark_. That’s not my name.

_Anderstark. Anderstark. Anderstark._

Blaine breaks eye contact with his reflection.

\--

“Are you sure about this?” Mom asks, looking down at the paperwork he’s put in front of her.

“Yeah,” Blaine says. “I don’t—this is who I am now.”

Mom shakes her head. “You know what Tony would say if he were here now, don’t you?” she asks. “You don’t _become_ a Stark; you’re born one.”

“Dad says a lot of stupid things,” Blaine says with a shrug.

“Indeed he does,” Mom agrees. “Do you ever regret it?”

“Regret what?”

“Asking me about the blood types,” Mom elaborates. “Finding out the truth.”

 _No_ , Blaine wants to say, but he doesn’t lie to his mom. “Sometimes,” he says instead. “I mean, I love Tony. He’s my dad. Just—it would be easier, sometimes, if I didn’t know. It would be easier if Iron Man were just this faraway superhero and I didn’t have to watch him dive into danger on a daily basis.

“But then, there’s Tony and I guess…” Blaine trails off. “He’s kind of been one of the best things to happen to me, Mom. I mean, he’s ridiculous and the dumbest genius you’ll ever meet, but he _gets_ me. And I think you tried, Mom, but I don’t think you ever really knew what to do with me at all.”

“I never knew what to do with Tony either,” Mom tells him with a sigh. She looks down at the form and uncaps her pen, signing her name with a flourish. She hands the forms over. “I love you, Blaine.”

He takes them. “Love you too, Mom.”

\--

“Blaine Anderson-Stark,” Kurt reads off the drivers licence. He hands the ID back to Blaine. “I like it.”

Blaine takes it. “Me too.”

**END**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** A TIMELINE FOR THIS FIC (BASED OFF THE IDEA THAT AVENGERS HAPPENED IN 2012 REAL TIME) **
> 
> **SOMETIME IN 1995** – Fresh from the deaths of his parents, Tony meets Pamela. He’s 18 when the affair starts. 19 when she ends it.
> 
>  **JUNE 1996** – Blaine is born. Pamela Anderson is back with her husband, who is trying to get sober. She vows to forget Tony.
> 
>  **1996 – 2010** : Blaine grows up.
> 
>  **2010:**  
>  JUNE – Blaine’s 14th Birthday. Pamela finally confesses the affair to Carl.  
> JULY – Blaine comes out. Blaine’s parents get divorced.  
> OCTOBER – Sadie Hawkins Dance. Blaine finds out about his parentage.  
> NOVEMBER – Blaine visits Carl in Chicago. Comes home early. | Tony turns 34. | Blaine meets Tony for the first time. They begin their relationship.
> 
>  **2011:  
> ** JANUARY – Tony leaves for a trip to Afghanistan and is abducted. **  
> **APRIL – Tony returns from Afghanistan. | LATE APRIL – Tony comes out to the press as Iron Man. **  
> **OCTOBER – Stark Expo. ****  
> NOVEMBER – Blaine meets Kurt. | Tony turns 35. | LATE NOVEMBER – Events of IM2 come to an end. Tony starts dating Pepper.  
>  DECEMBER – Blaine comes to visit for Christmas.
> 
>  **2012:**  
>  JANUARY – Ms Bewes approaches Blaine about competing in the engineering competition.  
> MARCH – Blaine and Kurt start dating. | Ohio round of the engineering competition. Blaine comes first.  
> APRIL – Blaine tells Kurt about his parentage.  
> MAY – Blaine tells Kurt he loves him. | National round of the engineering competition. Blaine is the guy from his category (Mechanical and Electrical engineering) who is selected to be sent.  
> JUNE – The events of The Avengers happen while Blaine is at an engineering competition in London.  
> AUGUST – Blaine quits the Warblers.  
> SEPTEMBER – Blaine is outed to the press. | Sebastian transfers into Dalton.  
> OCTOBER – Sebastian throws the rock salt slushie. Lots of drama.  
> NOVEMBER – Blaine changes his name to Blaine Anderson-Stark.
> 
> ** Other Notes: **
> 
> **In Part I:**
> 
>   * I am not a biologist, but the stuff with blood types is true. Also – it is actually possible for two Rh+ parents to have an Rh- child. Blaine has the rarest blood type in the UK – O negative. O positive is actually the most common blood type in the UK, which is interesting, I guess. And weird. But mostly interesting.
> 

> 
> **In Part II:**
> 
>   * I have so many problems with the palladium poisoning subplot in IM2. You have no idea. I tried to gloss of the insurmountable amount of scientific bullshit there, but whatever.
> 

> 
> **In Part III:**
> 
>   * The article on leap seconds is from xkcd’s What If? website. It’s [this one.](https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/)
> 

> 
> **In Part IV:**
> 
>   * The poster that reads, ‘If this poster is blue, stop running in the corridors’ is a joke about a physics phenomenon called, imaginatively, ‘blueshift’. Basically, when distant galaxies and so on are moving towards is, the light that we measure from them is shifted towards the blue area of the spectrum because the wavelengths get compressed. The opposite – when things are moving away from us – is called, wait for it, redshift. This is one of the ways we know the universe is still expanding, because faraway galaxies are redshifted.
>   * Blaine’s engineering project actually exists! It’s from Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair. You can read about it [here.](https://apps2.societyforscience.org/abstracts/project.cfm?PID=EE063&Year=2014)
>   * HPC stands for High Powered Computing. It’s sort of the umbrella term for supercomputers and suchlike. I find it hard to believe that Tony wouldn’t have developed his own supercomputers just by dint of the fact that JARVIS would need a freaking huge amount of processing power to run as smoothly as he does.
>   * ‘Animal, vegetable, or mineral?’ is the first question in twenty questions.
>   * Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for the creation of London’s first extensive sewer network and was an all-round boss of an engineer. I have no idea if the T-shirt Blaine buys exists. I hope it does.
> 



End file.
